The Nature of Perception, Marketing Essay Example

With the business world expanding more and more, business organizations are striving to apply marketing strategies that would give them a significant competitive advantage in the highly competitive market. The urge to compete effectively has seen most of the business companies consider advertisements among their efficient marketing strategies. According to Quester, Pettigrew, Kopanidis, Hill and Hawkins (2014, p.244, para.1), information stands to be the primary raw material for any business with which the marketer is forced to work on to be able to influence the consumers. Notably, organizations require a sound knowledge of perception to be able to understand and avoid likely problems when communicating with their target audience. Perception in marketing strategy is defined as "the critical activity that links the individual consumer to group, situation and marketer influence" (Quester et al., 2014, p.229, para.1). The critical connection between the consumer as the audience and the marketing messages has to undergo through three main perceptual marketing processes: exposure, attention, and comprehension or interpretation (Basu, 2017, para.1)

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The first stage of perception is exposure which defines what happens when the customer is originally exposed to the outside stimuli of a brand marketing or product through his or her senses. Through selective exposure, the customers can decide which stimuli to notice and which to ignore (Braun & Antonio, 2017, p.82, para.5). This process occurs when incentives get within range of the customers' sensory nerves. The second stage of perception is attention which occurs when the stimulus from the exposure activates one or more of the customer's sensory receptor nerves with the resulting sensations going to the brain for processing (Cross, 2018, para.4). The process then goes to the next stage, interpretation or sensory, which defines the process by which the customer's sensory receptors respond to environmental stimuli and transmission of the information to the brain via the nervous system (Wozniak, 2013, p.77, para, 4). Clearly, these processes describing the nature of perception occur virtually simultaneously and are interactive. Therefore, before a customer can establish the meaning about a brand or a product upon making initial contact, he or she has to go through the three stages of perception: exposure, attention, and interpretation in that order.

In conclusion, therefore, for the process of perception to be realized, it has to go through the three processes of exposure, attention and interpretation. Upon being exposed and paying attention to the external stimuli, a customer gets his or her sensory receptors activated by the incoming stimuli. The stimuli are interpreted by receptors such as ears, eyes, skin, taste buds among others, explaining the concept of perception. This then implies that the three processes are included in perception.

References

Basu, C. (2017, September 26). Three Perceptual Processes in Marketing. Retrieved March 06, 2018, from https://bizfluent.com/info-8297366-three-perceptual-processes-marketing.html

Braun, A. C., & Antonio, M. B. (2017). Attention, memory and perception: A conceptualanalysis of Neuropsychology applied to advertising and its influence on consumer behavior. Intercom - RBCC, 40(1), 77-95. doi: 10.1590/1809-5844201715

Cross, V. (2018). The Stages of Perception in Marketing. Retrieved March 02, 2018, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/stages-perception-marketing-22161.html

Hanna, N., & Wozniak, R. (2013). Consumer Behavior: An Applied Approach (4th ed.). Northern Illinois University: Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Quester, P. G., Pettigrew, S., Kopanidis, F., Hill, S. R., & Hawkins, D. I. (2014). Consumer behaviour: implications for marketing strategy. North Ryde, N.S.W.: McGraw-Hill Education (Australia).