Skip to main content

Customer Perceptions: How to Differentiate Yourself

Perception and why it matters
This week in Consumer Behavior class we covered the topic of perception and how as humans, we react to exposure, attention, and interpretation of marketing messages. Exposure occurs when a stimulus such as light, color, or an ad comes in contact with our senses. Attention occurs when the stimulus is passed on to our brain through our senses. Lastly, interpretation is assigned meaning of the experienced sensations. These three stages represent the process of perception for humans.

Why Does Perception Matter In Marketing?

Perception in the mind of the consumer influences customer awareness about a product or service, or an organization or brand. This perceived awareness comes from our memory, and thoughts and emotions evoked when we see, hear, touch, smell, or taste a product or marketing message from a company. Since customer perceptions are intangible, meaning they are a figment of abstract concepts, they may be very hard to understand a grasp from a companies point of view. Perceptions of products and services ultimately impact the purchasing choices consumers make. Gone are the days when price was the sole factors customers based their buying decisions on. Competition is fierce and now a variety of factors come into play. Products and services have to differentiate themselves from the competition if they want to succeed in the global marketplace. Consumers are still price sensitive, wanting the most value for their money, yet they want functionality, quality, and an unparalleled total product experience. This concept of total product encompasses every part of the purchasing process, your website, service, marketing, cost, features, value, that the customer evaluates you on. Customers need an exceptional total product, as well as a strong relationship between the customer and the company for your brand to have a competitive advantage. But this customer relationship is not based on quality of product alone, but rather how the customer perceives their experience and interactions with your brand. How fast and efficient is the service? Is there added benefits to their purchasing process? What is the delivery time? Quality of in store service? How user friendly is the physical store or online website? A favorable customer perception of a firm can be made or broken by one transaction from the consumer.

A Satisfied Customer is Not Enough

Brands now have to adapt upon their previous ways of competing for customers. Although important, producing a satisfied customer is not enough in today’s business world. A satisfied customer believes that a product or service has met their expectations…but perhaps not exceeded it. Loyal customers on the other hand are completely satisfied, and spread their satisfaction by recommending brands to their peer groups. Loyalty goes beyond price and quality, it is their perceived value of the product, service, or brand, and their feelings toward it.

This means that customers need the brand to evoke an emotional response when purchasing their product. When a customer is deciding what brand to purchase, they compared their perceived costs with the perceived value benefits that the product offers. The perceived costs could be more than the actual price, including usage costs, opportunity costs, disposal, and costs of switching. On the other hand, perceived benefits could be more than the physical product, including if our preferences our met, social status, exclusivity, and image. The involvement of feelings, customer experience, emotional appeal, and perception all combine to influence the purchasing decisions of a consumer. If a customer feels strongly about a brand, and their perceptions of value exceed the perceived costs, companies can gain a competitive stronghold over their competition. 

An Example: Arc'teryx


I perceive the athletic outdoors company Arc’teryx as a luxury brand that is worth the higher price tag. Based on my customer experience with the brand and its retail and online stores, their quality of clothing is paramount. They take care of their customers the moment you walk in the door. They are always willing to help, are knowledgeable about all their products and product uses, and have an excellent warranty policy. I have owned products for 6 plus years from Arc’teryx, and their clothing has stood the test of time and the elements. Their warranties are on the useful life of jackets and outerwear. I feel like I am making an investment in their clothing when I purchase their brand as I will have it for life. My perceived value of total product experience of Arc’teryx is way above the competition, and they will have me as a customer for life because I perceive them as a brand I can trust and rely upon in outdoor excursions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Schemas: Consumer Perceptions of a Brand

This week in Consumer Behavior we covered the topic of learning and memory. Diving deeper into this topic we explored our memory’s role in learning, including short-term and long-term memory, as well as the two paths to learning, conditioning or cognitive processing. The largest take away from our lectures that I grasped and took a liking to was human memory, and how brands can use schematic memory to influence consumers behaviors and perceptions around a brand. Why are Schemas Important? Schemas or schematic memory, sometimes called knowledge structures, are a pattern of associations around a particular concept. These associations are formed from within the long-term memory of a person. Marketers are specifically interested in semantic memory, and episodic memory, which make up LTM. Semantic memory is the basic knowledge and feelings an individual has about a concept, at a simple level, such as BMW being a “luxury car.” On the other hand, episodic memory is memory of a sequence o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Self-Concept: Capitalizing on Brand Identity

This week in consumer behavior we covered the topics of self-concept and lifestyle. What I took a liking to was the concept of how self-concept combines with a certain product’s brand image, to create a relationship between the two, and ultimately influence consumer purchasing habits.  How Self-Concept Works Self-concept, the totality of one’s thoughts, feelings, and perceptions towards their own self can be a useful tool for marketers, if acted on appropriately. The attitudes towards yourself make up how you truly think of your identity, and how you wish to be perceived by others. Since there are four basic parts that make up the self-concept, your actual self, ideal self, private self, and social self, it is important to know the relationships between each sub-section. The actual-ideal separation refers to the individuals perception of who I am now, vs who I would like to be perceived as. Lastly, the private-social separation refers to the individuals perception of how I am ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Digital Divide: An Increasing US Caste System

This week in Consumer behavior we discussed the changing American demographic, which pertains to our society’s population, distribution, and structure. To break this down even further, we talked about social stratification within the American demographic, and the socio-economic factors that affect our fairly malleable class system.   Although recalling a time without computers and technology might be hard, it is still relatively new. The world is now constantly seeing rapid transitions and increases in the computing power of technology. Not only are we right in the middle of this this digital age, our largest generation in the US, the millennials, are at the forefront of technological development. We are relied upon to create and develop new technologies, as well as refine and master old ones for generations to come. But with this obligation comes a price. The 21st century is experiencing a growing divide between the digital “haves” that have access to technology, and the digi...
Post a Comment
Read more