Consumer Behaviour

Internal Influences – Emotion and Perception

Dr. Jill Novak, University of Phoenix, Texas A&M University

This content is about consumer behavior, internal influences – emotion and perception.

A. Emotion

Emotion is difficult to define, and even more difficult to predict. However, they are important to marketers because consumers tend to react to marketing messages and make purchases based on feelings and emotions. Emotion can be used to create product benefits. Such as with Tide detergent and Cheerios cereal; their commercials feature families having wonderful moments together, that couldn’t have happened without those products.

B. Perception

Perception is the process by which people select, organize, and interpret information. Perception has four major steps:

1. Exposure – When a stimulus (like a billboard) comes within range of your senses (vision)

2. Attention – Determined by the individual and the situation; Nerves pass the information onto the brain for processing

3. Interpretation – when marketing messages are assigned meaning

4. Memory

a. Short-term—for immediate decision making
b. Long-term—for retention

For an ad to be successful it must have the following four elements:

1. Exposure

Must physically reach the consumer

2. Attention

The consumer must attend to it

3. Interpretation

It must be properly interpreted

4. Memory

Must be stored in memory that will allow retrieval

Emotion in advertising enhances attention, attraction, and is processed more thoroughly by the consumer and may be remembered better.

These are the elements of the relationship between emotion and understanding:

Self control-the ability to control your emotions
Emotional empathy-the ability to understand other people’s emotions
Positive/negative outlook-a person’s outlook on life can be upbeat and optimistic or depressed and negative; most people fall somewhere in between
Productivity-ability to use emotions to solve problems.