Consumer Perception

Naveen Kashyap, PhD

Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
Email: [email protected]
 Psychophysics
● What are the distinguishing features loyal consumers
perceive between their preferred brands and the
others on the market?
● Perception is the way in which an individual gathers,
processes, and interprets information from the
environment
● Sensory modalities, Gestalt psychology, and
consumer interpretations of perceptions
Sensory Perception
 Gestalt Theory of Perception
● The Gestalt principle can be stated simply as, “the
whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts”

● The most effective point-of-purchase materials are

those that use colors and shapes in an arresting way
not typically found in the surrounding environment
Factors Influencing Gestalt Perception
 Perception and Cognition: Consumer
Categorization
● The psychological process through which a consumer
compares the perception of a product with a mental
representation of that product in memory
● In analytic categorization, the perceived product has
to conform to a set of necessary attributes before it
can be put into a certain category
● In nonanalytic categorization, the consumer
focuses on the entire pattern of features in a holistic
manner
 Consumer Categorization

● An abstraction, or prototype, of the product is formed in

memory by focusing on the product’s important features and
forming a category that associates those features in relation
to the product
● An exemplar is the use of a particular brand that represents
most other brands
 Consumer Categorization
●By understanding how consumers categorize new
products, marketers can select strategies that lead to
correct categorization

●Shoppers have schemas in their mind representing

prototypical stores, and they compare that
prototypical store image with a store they may evaluate
in a shopping situation
 Consumer Attributions
● Attribution is the process through which people
connect events and behavior with causes

● Consumers seek explanations for marketplace events,

and the way they come up with answers affects how
they feel toward related products, services, brands,
and firms
 Product/Service Perception
● Product/service perceptions—the inferences
consumers make about products/services, attributing
their performance to specific qualities or features

● The extent to which consumers make internal versus

external attribution is referred to as the attribution
locus of control
 Product/Service Perception
● Attributions of stability refer to the extent to which
the consumer attributes the cause of the product or
service failure to a one-time event versus a “stable”
event

● Attributions of controllability refer to the extent to

which the consumer attributes the cause of product or
service failure to events that could have been
controlled by the firm
 Self-Perception
● The causes to which consumers attribute their
own behavior are a dimension of their self-
perception
● Research has shown that brand attitude and
preference is influenced by self-perceptions
● If consumers perceive themselves as using a
specific brand, they infer that they must like it
 Person Perception
● Person perceptions are the inferences consumers
make about the reasons behind the actions of others

● Discounting principle: the consumer decides that

external pressures are provoking the salesperson to act
a certain way

● Augmentation principle: the consumer augments the

weight of the salesperson recommendation
 Person Perception

● Consumers also have a tendency to make a

fundamental attribution error in person perception
●

● Positivity bias: positive information about a single

employee leads to inferences that the firm’s other
employees are similarly positive
 Consumer Inferences
● Consumers learn about products from various
sources (e.g., advertising, promotion, word-of-mouth
communication)
● But consumers don’t learn everything they need to
know to help them judge these products
● So consumers fill in the remaining information by
making inferences
 Inductive Inferences
● Induction is the process in which consumers
generalize from specific information to general
conclusions

● Inferences based on information integration

– Information integration theory posits that
consumers evaluate each product attribute
separately and combine these evaluations into an
overall evaluation through the use of a simple
algebraic rule such as adding or averaging
 Inductive Inferences
● Heuristic-based inferences
– They use a single piece of information to make
inference about the overall quality of the product

– Price-quality inference: Consumers infer aspects

of quality from information about price

● Inferences based on accessibility-diagnosticity

 Deductive Inferences
● Deduction is the process of construing specific
conclusions from principles or assumptions
● Attitude-based inferences
– Consumers often use their own general attitude
toward the brand to make specific inferences about
quality of specific brands
● Category-based inferences
– An example of category-based inference is a
country-of-origin deduction
Perceptions of Product/Service Quality
Two Conceptualizations of Service Quality
● “Nordic” perspective
– Functional quality represents how the service is
delivered
– Technical quality reflects the outcome of the
service act
● “American” perspective
– Reliability Empathy Assurance
Tangibles Responsiveness
Factors Influencing Perception
Of Quality of Service
Risk Perception/Risk
Reduction
Categories of Risk Perception
1. Performance risk
2. Financial risk
3. Physical risk
4. Social risk
5. Psychological risk
6. Time and convenience risk
7. Opportunity loss risk
 Perception of Switching Costs

● Consumers perceiving greater switching costs

tend to continue using the service provider they
are already doing business with
● Procedural switching costs
● Financial switching costs
● Relational switching costs
 Price Perception

● Consumers evaluate the price tag of a specific brand

by comparing that price with an internal referent price

● Social judgment theory states that people attribute

meaning to incoming information by matching this
information to a mental category or referent
 Price Perception

● The assimilation region is the area around the

referent in which the incoming information is
categorized as similar to that referent

● The contrast region is the area in which the incoming

information is categorized as different from the
referent
 Referent Price Influences
● Aspiration price Expected price
● Previously paid Expected future price
price
● Fair price Normal market price

● Recalled price Highest and lowest prices

● Reservation Contextual price
price
Perceived Value
 Country Image
1. Overall country image is the total of all beliefs that a
consumer has about a particular country
2. Aggregate product country image is the perception of
overall quality of the products from that particular country
3. Specific product country image is the overall perception
consumers form of a specific product category from a
particular country
• Country-image perceptions influence product evaluations
through a halo effect
 Perception of a Pioneer Brand

● A brand that is first to sell in the market in a

product category
● A “me too brand” is typically perceived
unfavorably compared with the pioneer brand,
an advantage that has come to be known as the
prototypicality explanation of pioneer brands