Perception - How does it affect the 5 senses?

Have you ever gone into a shop and walked out or turned your nose because of the smell?  That is simply your brain telling you that your nose has sensed a new scent and your brain is analyzing it, after a while you get used to it and simply forget about it. This is all down one of the 5 senses: Smell. Without smell you wouldn't be able to tell when dinners ready!!

What is perception you may ask? Perception is the process by which the five senses are chosen, organised and interpreted (Solomon, M R et al, 2010).

Many retailers use the sense of smell to attract to people to their stores. For example when a food store adds a new line to their inventory list they often do sampling so people can even taste and feel the product. This is the probably one of the best forms or marketing because the people are hearing about the product and can instantly get an idea about it and precept it without having to spend any money. Kotler's buyer decision model shows this example perfectly as the potential customer recognises the need for the product, the sales person then passes on information to them about the product, and helps evaluate the alternatives which leads to the purchase decision. After this stage the Post purchase behaviour depends on whether the product was bought or not. If it was the customer may make a repeat purchase or purchase another brand to evaluate the alternatives for themselves in order to make an informed decision.

If a products packaging is untidy the brain automatically tells you that your not going to like it. It is only when you are approached to test the product that you could surprise yourself and like the product - so don't always trust your initial perception of the product.

There are many other ways of using your perception apart from the sense of smell. The human body has many ways of perceiving thing. There is the sense of touch, hearing, seeing, taste and of course smell. All these different sense do different things but many interrelate. Without these senses we would not be able to differentiate things, especially taste, as everything would taste the same! How boring would that be??

The Gestalt principal says that people can only get a true idea of the item by seeing the full picture and not just bits of information. The word Gestalt means whole, pattern or configuration in German. The system implies that consumers tend to perceive an incomplete picture as complete as they are filling in the blanks with their own personal experience. This is why a person can read a sign even if some letters are missing as they can fill in the blanks with their own personal experience. (Solomon et al, 2010)

Solomon, M R et al, 2010,Consumer behaviour a european perspective, 4^thed, Harlow,Pearson Education Limited

Selling Colour

I never knew that when market a product was so much involved until now! The use of colours really help identify who the product is aimed at. For example the Cadbury product 'Spots Vs Stripes', people tend to associate chocolate and the colour purple to Cadbury's Dairy Milk. This is what they have done with 'Spots Vs Stripes'. They have kept the purple background but added some white to show how it is different but people still know it is a Dairy Milk bar. 

Their main competitors attempted to use different shades of the colour purple for example Nestle Yorkie Raisin & Biscuit used the colour burgundy but have not had as much success than the original Dairy Milk bar. In 2008 Cadbury Trebor Bassett redesigned the Dairy Milk range yet keeping each product unique whilst still making the packaging uniform. This helped increase sales of their products and helped the products that didn't sell as much as before, for example Cadbury's Turkish. (Mintel, Chocolate confectionery UK, 2010).

Many different colours show different things for example the colour green on a pack of Walkers salt and vinegar crisps is well known yet the colour on packet rarely has anything to do with the flavor of the product. This shows that the marketers are using colour to aim their product at certain age groups. This plays a big part in the market place as boys aged between 5-8 tend to think girls have 'koodies' and that everything pink is associated with girls therefore they may not want to eat prawn cocktail crisps.

The same rule applies in the fresh fruit and vegetable market, if the produce is off colour people will not buy that one and look for an alternative. If all the produce is like this the company will either have to reduce it at a loss or they will have to take it off sale and make an even bigger loss. 


To finish off this edition of Global Waffle many companies stick to their known colours but often try and edit their colour schemes to see if it makes any difference to sales. If not they can quickly withdraw the product from the market and re distribute the original product.


(http://academic.mintel.com , accessed Wednesday 20th October 2010)

The First Week at Bucks New University...



Starting somewhere is a difficult thing to do. Especially when your in a completely new area of the country. But when I first walked in to my class room I was greeted by Ruth who made the entire ordeal that little bit easier with a session of 'speed mating' to help us all get to know each other.

Luckly I didn't get lost as I knew where I was going and got to the room quite early and was one of the first students there. As time went on more and more people came and we just had a general conversation about our summer and backgrounds.

The tuesday was quite interesting when we teamed up with the other years in a packaging competition (sadly our group didn't win!) but it was still good fun and a good opertunity to get to know the other students who were in their second or final year of education at Bucks. 

Apart from that there was nothing else to really do during the first week except filling in forms and getting enrolled which just took forever as the guy who was doing mine messed it up three times!!!!!  The free pizza and spring rolls at the freshers fair were nice though :) Once all this was done it was then into week 2 and the work started. 

Thank you for reading Global Waffle!