Sensory

Explore how knowledge of the process of consumer perception helps marketers to develop products and communications that are likely to be more appealing and successful.

Perception is the process by which physical sensations such as sights, sounds and smells are selected, organised and interpreted. The eventual of a stimulus allows it to be assigned meaning. The perceptual map process is a widely used marketing tool which evaluates the relative standing of competing brands along relevant decisions.

There are three steps to be negotiated in the perceptual process that marketers must have good competent knowledge of in order to produce a successful product or service. Marketers need to know that the perceptual process is very important to the product positioning of a product or service. A successful product or service will have been researched thoroughly by the marketer by using the perceptual process. Marketers have to be very aware that people’s stimuli will have a very strong influence when a consumer is selecting a particular product to purchase. The inputs picked up by consumers five different senses generates which type of response they may have to a product.

Marketers believe that aspects of visual elements have a very strong impact on consumers, so this is why they rely heavily on these elements in advertising and in the packaging of products. An important visual element for marketers to have knowledge of is the impact colour can have on a consumer. This is frequently exploited by marketers especially when packaging products. Coca Cola can be used as an example of a company who have used the colour red for their product and it now is so ironically associated with the brand.

The sense of smell is another important element sense marketers rely on when providing a product or service. Smell can invoke memories in consumers when they are researching a particular product to buy. An example of this would be if a supermarket provided an odour of freshly home cooked...