Summary Sensory Perception & Consumer Preference
Lecture 1: Introduction
• Sensory marketing: marketing that engages the consumer’s senses and affects their
perception, judgement and behaviour
• Unconscious triggers for the basic senses, are an efficient way to appeal to consumers
• Example of sensory effects: people where in a room with low citrus smell
o Costs less time for people to recognize cleaning related words
o Leads to behavioural intentions of cleaning later that day. Reason: citrus smell
enhanced accessibility of the cleaning concept in the brain
o People more often removed their crumbles from the table. So it also affects action
plans!
• How does sensory input affect response?
o Direct affective response → you like the product or not. So the response is a direct
effect of the sensory stimuli of the product and not of other processes.
o Appropriate to schema effect → response is positive if it is congruent with what you
expected and you can successful categorize it. Slightly misfitting leads to less boredom.
o Associations to concepts in knowledge structure → the sensory stimuli is an entry
to the retrieval of a memory (cognitive effect). For instance smell of pine tree activates
the Christmas concept in your mind. So your behaviour is not because you like the
product so much but because it retrieves these nice memories.
o Emotions → your response depends on the affect/mood/emotion that you are brought
in because of the sensory stimuli. Mood influences your decision making processes.
• Sense bring outside information to the inside. They guide perception (what you observe),
preference (what you like) and behaviour (what you do)
• From sensory stimulus to behaviour
Example 1: apple vibrates at a certain wavelength (physico-chemical feature). If you pay
attention to the stimulus, this will be sensed by your eyes as a sensation. Cognitive
processing in brain leads to perception of green colour and sour taste. Combining with
information you already have leads to preference (you don’t like green apples) and
behaviour (you avoid this apple)
Example 2: Ellen walks in a wood with all kinds of environmental stimuli. Ellen focusses on a
butterfly, which is the attended stimuli. Stimuli hits the receptors. This is transduced to
electrical energy. In the brain, it is processed by combining with existing knowledge. This
leads to the perception of a butterfly. Leads to recognition (hedonic response, preference)
and action.
• Perception: after interpretation of the sensation by the brain. So sensory stimuli + meaning.
• Sensation and perception can be different → sensation of auditory signal may be the same but
the perception changes when you look at the mouth or not.
• Grounded cognition theory: state of body has an effect on the mind, how you think
o Bodily state: a particular bodily state results in certain behaviour and though
processes. When you activate smiling muscles by putting an pencil between your lips,
this information comes in the brain and increases funniness ratings of cartoons
o Situation action: moving the body has effect on the mind. up and down head nodding
during reading add → they agree with the add. So it changes how you evaluate things.
o Mental simulation: you can activate brain areas by simply thinking about products.
• Sensory experience becomes more important these days! Because:
o We want to be entertained
o Basic needs are already satisfied → next level in need hierarchy (Maslow)
o We have an intrinsic need for stimulation (optimal stimulation level)
▪ People differ in their optimal level of arousal
▪ Below optimal stimulation level → exploratory behaviour to seek additional
stimulation
▪ Above optimal stimulation level → avoidance behaviour to reduce stimulation
o Consumption itself becomes more important (reading is not rewarding but the learning
of it is important) = intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation model. The intrinsic
motivation is consumption itself (reading is nice). The extrinsic motivation is the means
to an end (you learn from reading). Both intrinsic and extrinsic determine behaviour.
,• KANO model: customers want to satisfy there
needs.
• Red: basic needs. If they are done very well,
no big gain. But if they are slightly less well,
big loss of satisfaction. Safety of food.
• Yellow: performance needs. The more, the
better. For instance price.
• Green: attractive needs. Not expected. If
better, large gain. Upgrade business class.
Lecture 2+3: Sensory information processing
Sensory systems
• Vision: only 4 receptors. To see depth, colour,
black/white, weak/strong light, adaptation from dark to light and vice versa. The stimuli is the
electromagnetic radiation at a certain wavelength.
• Audition: high/low tones, loud/soft sounds, helps in navigating though the world because of
moving air. Tells you about the surrounding.
• Temperature: 6 receptors. React to low or high temperatures. Can also react to menthol or
capsaicin! Hot AND cold sensation is when both receptor types are activated.
• Olfaction: 350 receptors! Left and right but you cannot notice the direction. Fast adaptation to
smells. You only notice differences. Warning system. Retronasal olfaction: enjoyment.
Pheromones are smell compounds that affect behaviour of human. Weak odours have more
effect on behaviour than strong smells. Olfaction is very personal, difficult to describe.
• Flavour: smell (orthonasal and retronasal) + taste + mouthfeel (temperature, pain, touch).
Not always combined. You can separate bath smell from coffee taste.
• You cannot have twice the same perception! First time, it is new. Second time, you
remember the first time. The stimulus is the same but you changed, you can combine with
existing knowledge now.
The perception process
• Sensation: a stimulation of sensory receptor gives rise to neural impulses
• Perceptual organization: sensory information is taken together which leads to a coherent
picture
• Identification and recognition: you give meaning to what you see. You have to use your
memory = high level of cognitive process.
• Perception depends a lot on the context, what you already know
• Subliminal perception: you are not aware of something but you still process it. Actually this
unconscious perception is not possible because perception is always conscious! However, there
CAN be unconscious influences on behaviour and thought.
Properties of perceptual objects
• Quality → what is it?
• Intensity → how strong is it? For instance loud/quiet or hot/less hot
• Hedonic → do I like it? Large individual differences
• Information → a message received and understood
Information
• Cognitive information
o Declarative knowledge: definitions and concepts
o Procedural knowledge: how to do things, difficult to describe
• Top down information
o What you already know and is in your brain
o Prior encounters, memory, information, expectations
o Knowing about concepts → helps you in this world
o Robot cleaner does not have top down information → does not know poo
o Needed for structuralism: breakdown of perception into elementary sensations
• Bottom up information
o What the sensory system senses, stimuli
o Temperature, taste, smell, vision, touch, sound, pain
• Bottom up and top down information is both added to the sensory object to give it a meaning!
, • Many processes are subconscious (not aware: automatic processes, habits, thoughts). Other
processes are conscious: when you use your working memory.
Grouping of concepts
• Concept: lumping together many instances under an abstract term
• Bottom up: things belong together because they are close or similar
• Top down: things belong together because they have the same meaning
• Temporal grouping: a melody is a sequence of tones. On its own it is nothing but together,
close in time, it is a melody
• Gestalt = something together. You see square while it are actually circles with white corners.
You see patterns. This also happens for flavour: it is a combination of smell, taste and
mouthfeel (pain, temperature, touch)
Sensory information processing
• Reduce: lot of stimuli are ignored because you don’t need everything to act. Selective
attention: You point attention to things that are important to behave. NOT because of limited
brain capacity!
• Elaborate: you do something with the information. For instance linking it to what you already
know → making associations and new mental connections. Elaboration helps remembering.
• Store: you need memory (previous knowledge) to fill in the gaps that you don’t see to make a
visualisation of the world.
• Transform: receptors produce a neural code that can go to the brain
• Recover: retrieval of the memories. Missing parts are filled in..
• Use: you do something with the information. Validity of knowledge: does it work or not?
• Emotional information: advertisements want to convey emotions. A bodily reaction can be felt.
Can be influenced by culture and personal history.
• Dual process theory: fast processing of information → you are not aware (a lot of the food
choices). Slow processing of information → you think about what happened.
Preferences
• Can be inborn or learned
• You learn which things are connected to positive feelings
• Determinants of food preference
o Inborn (innate)
o Neophobia: dislike of new things. Counteracted by curiosity and neophilia.
o Exposure and conditioning
o Imitation and modelling: you imitate others (advertisements show eating people to
stimulate imitation). Seeing is almost doing.
Conditioning
• Classical conditioning: two stimuli leads to learning. If you always have a bell together with
food, the dog will after a certain amount of time salivate when it hears the bell without the
food.
• Certain surrounding leads to bodily defence against drugs. In a different environment, this
bodily defence is not activated so faster overdose.
• Conditioned Taste Aversion: if you get sick of something, you don’t want to eat it anymore
• Operant Conditioning: behaviour can lead to a positive or negative consequence. Positive
behaviour will be repeated. Gambling: all the times you don’t win are counteracted by this one
positive result.
o Antecedent: rat touched accidently the button for food
o Behaviour: the response, the rat keeps touching the button
o Consequence: food keeps coming out
Memory
• Because of memory you have the capacity to encode (mental representation is formed in
memory), store (retention of encoded material) and retrieve (recovery of stored information)
information
• Sensory register / sensory memory: very short. You see something and after that, it is gone. It
is precognitive: you cannot do anything with it. Large capacity.
o Sensory masking: when you see a picture followed by another picture. The second
picture erases the memory of the first picture forever.
