Branding and Consumer Behaviour – The Power of Perception
Branding has everything to do with consumer perception. Brand is the link between the message that companies want to convey to the target market and the message that the target market perceives of the message. Perception is, in itself, a complex phenomenon that plays a major role in influencing complex human behaviour – and a better understanding of the idea of perception would throw a lot of light on the importance of this phenomenon in branding and advertising.
At a basic level, people never know facts – at best, they only think they know. And they know only that which they perceive. When people perceive, they are in receipt of sensory signals that get translated into images or objects in their mind. In reality, what those signals depict may not be what it is interpreted to be.
Perception and Human Behaviour: This problem of perception, where what is perceived may not be what it really is, arises on account of the numerous sensory impulses that the human mind receives. And perception is largely dependant on the personality, the person’s experiences, his mood, his emotions, his past and his future aspirations. Experiments conducted on perception have yielded results that have underlined the importance of projecting the right image to the person to whom the message is addressed; on a similar scale, the phenomenon of perception also provides insights into the vulnerability of the human mind, as to how easily human perception can be distorted and manipulated to suit the purpose and intent of the message.
Psychological Experiment on Perception: In an experiment done on two sets of subjects, they were presented with the CV of a lecturer. Team A was presented with the CV where words were modified to give a dull and boring impression of the lecturer; Team B was given the same CV of the same lecturer where words were modified to give an impression of energy and vitality. Expectedly, teams A and B portrayed the same CV as being dull and interesting, respectively.
Later, members of the two teams were asked to attend a lecture by the lecturer simultaneously. At the end of the lecture, when asked for their feedback, Team A said the lecturer was cold and aloof while Team B said the Lecture was warm and friendly! (Ref: Marketing Magazine)
The human mind can easily be influenced to make it see only what we want it to see and it sees only that which it thinks the reality is. It is this power of perception that needs to be carefully leveraged by advertisers and marketers to influence consumer behaviour. Brands that do not pay attention to the phenomenon of Perception risk being dumped, despite representing products of the best quality.
