This is a blog dedicated to information I have gathered and learnt surrounding the module "Understanding the Customer".

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Perceived Risk Model - Harvard Bussiness School Mid 60's

"Behaviour is said to depend upom an individual subjective perception of the risk inherent in buying a product - peoples tolerance to risk varies" - Harvard Bussiness School Mid 60's.

Involvement
Laurent and Kapferer '85, argue that a consumers level of involvement will be affected by these componants:

Importance and Risk (FTPEPS)
FINANCE - whats the financial risk?
TIME - How much time does it take to make this purchase decision?
PERFORMANCE - What is the risk of this item not performing to standards?
EGO - What will this purchase do for your ego?
PHYSICAL - What is the risk involved in this item causing harm?
SOCIAL - What will this purchase do for your social status?

The reulsts of FTPEPS will differ from purchase to purchase and from person to person. Eg. An 18 yr old buying a new mobile phone will have a HIGH importance rate of the SOCIAL risk, but compared to a 50 yr old it could be considered a LOW importance rate of the SOCIAL risk as a mobile phone is not as socially important to this age group.

Attention
In any Advert/Product/Brand the following items are normally used to grab the attention and stimulate a consumer:

MOVEMENT
CONTRAST
REPETITION
PRETTY PEOPLE
SIZE

These seem to be the best items that trigger selective attention of a consumer.

Perceptual Set
This is a selector and interpretoe that prevents us from problem solving sometimes as it fixes the focus of the mind.

Vernon (1955) - Psychology. "Individuals develop a persistent and deep rooted way of perceiving, thinking and believing. In other words everyone gets stuck in their own ways of thinking.

Gestalt Psychology
(Not a person but a way of thinking - psychology of the form)

Is there a rule book for how we think? Everyone seems to be different but studying this and the reasons why is incredibkly hard to do since the majortiy of people themselves do not know why they think the way they do.

We tend to focus on:
Foreground (The most obvious)
Groouping (Proximity and Simularity)
Closure (our brains need to make sense of things, complete and understand them)
Stimulus Ambiguity (Making sense of things that aren't quite normal)



Buyers Decision - Kotler

The 5 stages:

Need Recognition - " I fancy a Drink"
Information search - "Wheres the nearest place I can get one?"
Evaluation of Alternatives - "orange, apple, cola, lemonade..."
Purchase Decision - "I dont like fruit and I prefer cola so i'll get that"
Post Purchase Behaviour - "good choice :)"

This is a very logical model but being fast paced consumers some steps are completely missed out and a lot of the reasonings are instant unconsious ones. This works best when it is a first time purchase and it is not out of habbit and on low involvement purchases.

buying a house -> HIGH involvement ( a lot of thought and consideration and time spent)
buying a drink -> LOW involvement. (almost unthought about and rutine decisions)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Perception

Perception

Wilkie 1994 "Perception is the process of sensing, selecting and interpreting consumer stimuli in the external world."

To paraphrase, perception is the way in which something is seen.


There are a few models based on the Perceptual Process, one being "The Black Box Model" as refered to by Kotler. The best way to direct you through this model is to think of it as you would a computer system, input, processing and output. Each stage effects the next.




(Tutor2u.net)

The input is the stimuli aimed at the consumer, the process (in grey) is the decisions that the consumer makes based on the input and their own personal characteristics decision process, and then the output is the resulting response depending on variables such as the amount, frequency, brand choice etc.


The above image is the NLP Communication Model also based on buyer behaviour. This model is best described as a filtration system, where external events and stimuli are taken in through the 5 senses, of these stimuli we filter out the 1,000's that are not important at that moment in time (such as background noise of traffic). Then based on our own state, physiology, memories etc we create our own internal representation which then causes us to react to these stimuli in a certain behaviour.

Selling Paint!!

This was an activity where in groups we had a target audience to sell paint to (Under 8's, Young Socialising Graduates and Wealthy Retired People.) Each group had the same colours but using sensory stimuli we would have to name each colour.


For Example a light green colour being sold to the under 8's was called "Bogey Green", the same green was named "Mojito" for the graduates and then for the retired consumers it was entitled "Cottage Jade".

The way in which this colour green was named was based on the best way to stimulate the consumer, and this would vary from consumer type to consumer type. We also had to name our paint brand accordingly to the same group we were marketing.

For under 8's - Pix and Mix - children relating to the sweet selection activity.

Graduates - Mixology - 20+ relating to the socialising lifestyle containing alcohol, bars etc.
Retired - (unnamed) - based on the idea that older consumers don't fall for brand names rather that quality.


Examples of Advertisers Using the 5 Senses:


Hearing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMKScopMnKI
In this Ad by The Guardian it's the lack of music and colour that activates stimuli for consumers to take notice.



Tasting:

In this M&S print advert the close up on the fresh food stimulates the taste sensory, triggering memories and notions of such food.


Touching:

This is a print Pantene Pro V Shampoo advert that relays on stimulating the consumers sense of touch, the hair is being shown to be so soft that it can be worn as you would a scarf.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

First Things First...

Welcome to my first post on the blog which has been created to continually document information and research based on the modual within my degree called “Understanding the Customer”.

The first Lecture was based on consumer psychology which was very interesting as it was all based on the very human exercise of judging and analysing things/people at a first glance, (apparently we make a full jusgement on a persons personality and ideologies within the first 12 seconds of seeing them!) In the marketing world it is vital to understand and know your consumer before you do anything else. Todays lecture was to get us into the habbit of analysisng and explaining why we have made this snap decisions.

Activity 1: “The Books”
This activity was simply two book covers with teh authors name and the title removed to give no indication of what the story is about. All we had to do was literally judge a book by its cover. The two covers were very different one being bold red and the other a monochrome. We made two different judgments on the books, aiming them at different people, we decided on slightly different storylines and protagoists. The catch was that the two books were exactly the same but with a different cover. This proved that although the product is exactly the same, you have to market it in different ways to reach different people.

Activity 2: “Egg”
For this activity everyone had to draw a shape to fill the page and then answer questions put to them within the shape anyway they wished. For example if the question was “what is your worst fear?” one person would neatly write spiders, whilst someone else would draw a huge scarey lookin spider to portray their fear. Once all the questions had finished everyone swapped round and without knowing the name of the person would make similar judgements on their persona by analysing their “egg.” To work with the previous example; the person who wrote “spiders” small and neat could have been jusged to be shy, organised and an introvert, whereas the person who drew the spider could be judged as an extrovert, creative and a loud person.

I found both of these exercises really helpfull and interesting in understanding how and why we make these quick decissions on things and people. As we are all different and have slightly different ideologies and experiences, our criticisms are all slightly different and this is incredibly important for marketers to understand. Humans are unique and unpredictable, each must be approached and judged in a slightly different way.

Thanks!

Thanks for having a look through! Hopefully it's been interesting and useful for you. If you have any queeries or suggestions please feel free to comment or event email me at the given address.

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