Week 1: Lecture + Krishna (2012) Paper on Sensory Marketing
PERCEPTION
-Perception is the awareness or understanding of sensory information.
-Elements of consumer perception:
• Exposure: bringing the stimulus to the consumer. Ex. light is turned on, we are exposed to the
light.
• Attention
• Comprehension
-How do we process what we’re exposed to?
• Sensing: immediate response
• Organizing: assembling sensory evidence into something recognizable
o Assimilation: sensory information shares the same characteristics with the knowledge,
fit in the category.
▪ Ex. sipping coffee, you drank coffee before, you know it’s coffee
o Accommodation: share some but not all characteristics, need an adjustment to fit
▪ Ex. sipping iced coffee when you’ve never drank it before, you think “oh I
know this from somewhere, but it’s not exactly what I know it because the
coffee I know is hot, not cold”.
o Contrast: doesn’t share any characteristic, doesn’t fit in the category
▪ Ex. drinking wine, never have drunk wine before, as you have no idea about
the taste, texture etc. it’s completely new information.
• Reacting: physical and mental responses to the stimuli
-Theories about perception: the traditional dissociation paradigm suggest that consumers are
influenced by stimuli when they’re not aware of them. Attention is not necessarily conscious.
-When do we detect the stimuli?
,-Subjective threshold is a function of attention and motivation.
-Example to subliminal messaging: hidden objects in logos (Toblerone, Camel).
-How can we measure something that consumers are not aware of? Whenever an indirect measure of
responding is more strongly influenced by stimulus exposure than is a comparable direct measure of
responding, perception without awareness can be inferred.
-Recognition (direct measure): asking “did you see the imagine I put in between my slides?”
Yes/No.
-Affect (indirect measure): observing the change in mood after showing the image.
-Hence, if someone answers “no” to the first question but had a mood change after seeing the
imagine, then we call this “perception without awareness”.
Paper: Bornstein & D’Agostino (1992) - Stimulus Recognition and the Mere Exposure Effect
-Mere exposure effect: unreinforced exposure is sufficient to enhance attitude towards the stimulus.
When one is repeatedly exposed to an image their attitude changes. Increase in repetition (ex. seeing
the image), increase in liking.
-It is proven in different contexts like advertising, social perceptions and behavior, and prejudice.
-Even if on the first sight you don’t believe in the image shown, you will start believing it as you see it
more.
-The mere exposure effects can be obtained by stimuli that are neither recalled nor recognized by
subjects.
-Research problem: The mere exposure effect produced by stimuli that are not recognized at better-
than-chance accuracy are substantially larger than mere exposure effects produced by clearly
recognized stimuli. → If you’re not aware of the stimuli, its effects on you are bigger than if you were
aware of them.
-RQ: Comparing the magnitude of the mere exposure effect produced by subliminal stimuli vs
supraliminal stimuli that are consciously perceived.
-Theoretical framework:
-Experimental procedure:
1. Different stimuli (abstract -polygon-, meaningful -women photos-)
2. Different exposures (0,1,5,10, 20 repetition per stimulus)
3. Half of the stimuli were exposed at a subliminal exposure duration (5 ms), other half were
exposed at a supraliminal exposure duration (500 ms)
4. After exposure subjects made affect (liking) and recognition judgements.
,-Key takeaways of the study:
• Subliminal stimuli produce significantly stronger mere exposure effects than do stimuli that are
clearly recognized.
o These finding were true for both polygon and photograph (abstract and meaningful),
showing generalizability of the effect.
-Further questions:
1. What was the limitation of experiment 1? Repetition created boredom.
2. How did the researchers solve the problem in experiment 2? They included Welsh figures and
used heterogeneous exposure sequence to minimize boredom effects.
ATTENTION
-Attention is the act of devoting cognitive resources to the stimuli.
-English readers read from left to right, so the most important information should be placed in the
upper left.
, -Large elements, motion and colors get noticed.
-Heatmap: showing where attention is devoted the most. Red>yellow>green
-Fixation: how many times a participant looked at the image.
-Characteristics of attention:
• Limited: there is too many stimuli but we don’t have the capacity to give attention to all.
• Selective: once we fixate our attention to one stimuli we tend to ignore others.
• Can be divided: it is possible to devote attention to different things at the same time.
-Aspects of attention:
• Voluntary: we choose to devote our attention to a specific stimulus.
• Involuntary:
-Grabbing attention:
• Promote voluntary attention:
o Make it personal.
o Connect with needs.
• Promote involuntary attention:
o Increase salience: how quickly a stimulus come to our senses.
o Increase vividness: how strong a stimulus come to our senses.
-What visual properties draw attention:
• Color, size, motion, pictures.
• Gestalt rules of visual processing: a set of rules describing visual perception:
o Proximity: elements that are close together tend to be viewed as part of the same
object; those farther apart tend to be viewed as part of different objects.
o Similarity: elements that physically resemble each other tend to be viewed as part of
the same object; those that are physically dissimilar tend to be viewed as different
objects.
