Perception and Purchasing Behavior

 

In the mini case study, Barbara’s decision to purchase a wine for her boss was influenced by the distinctive gold lettering on a rich burgundy background, the slim and sophisticated “feel” of the bottle and its French label. She also bought the white wine because she associated it with elegant dinners. Moreover, Barbara evaluated the quality of the wine based on its expensive price. Clearly, Barbara, not a wine drinker, is affected by her perception in purchasing wine to impress her boss.

 

This decision process is influenced by the information available to the consumer and the way in which the consumer processes that information. The decision process is also influenced by the consumer's beliefs, attitudes, and intentions as well as many other individual characteristics. Two stages in the decision process are particularly relevant to this study: search, that is whether the consumer seeks label information when selecting products and alternative evaluation, that is, whether or not the consumer uses label information in considering product alternatives.

 

Whether consumers will search for and use label information will be influenced by both characteristics of the product and of the buyer. Product characteristics include the extent to which the product's probable performance can be assessed by visual inspection and its complexity, that is, the number of decisions the consumer is required to make about it. Consumer characteristics include experience with purchasing the product, and the kinds of criteria the consumer uses in judging the product. The evaluative criteria are shaped by the consumer's beliefs, attitudes, and perception of risk in the purchase.

 

Research on sensation and perception, attention, categorization, inference making, information search, memory, attitude and behavior, attitude formation and formation, conditioning and satisfaction have been undertaken to understand consumer behavior (Jacobi, Johar & Motrin, 1998). In the area of sensation and perception and attention, most works are confined primarily to visual or auditory processes. Barbara’s attention may have affected her decision-making process. Attention refers to the momentary focusing of processing capacity on a particular stimulus. Among the studies on this area include those of Russo and Leclerc (1994) who examined attention to packages on store shelves, as measured by eye fixations. In Barbara’s case, her gaze directly falls on a group of bottles displayed at eye level. These bottles immediately caught her attention. 

 

Barbara’s attitude toward white wine further validates her choice of wine. According to the most frequently used definition offered by Allport (1935), attitudes are a learned predisposition to respond to an object or class of objects in a consistently favourable or unfavourable way. Although an attitude is a complex construct, in simple terms it represents the kind of things people like or dislike (Allport, 1935). For example, Barbara’s negative attitude toward sweet wines is due to her experience in college when she when drinking too much sweet wine made her sick. As stated by Cobanoglu, Ekinci & Park, 2001, attitudes towards purchase behaviour are believed to be shaped by many factors such as direct experience with the product, information acquired from others, exposure to mass media etc.

Another factor that affects Barbara’s decision is her memory. Research on memory suggested that memory plays an important role in consumer decision processes. Specifically, research on memory and advertising states that consumer memory remained steady or improved as number of ads increased, although it is generally thought that advertising clutter reduces recall Brown and Rothschild (1993). Moreover, Singh et al. (1994) found that it is better for ads to have been spaced with a significant time lag when memory is measured after a long delay.

The name of the wine label which is French and the elegance of its form suggest that for Barbara, the brand that she is about to purchase is of high quality. According to Tibetts (2003), brand equity reflects the good things and positive associations that accrue because the brand has delivered on its stated promises. Brand valuation, on the other hand, attempts to attach a measurable value to that asset. Brands that have created equity command a price premium in the marketplace. Most equity research tries to assess the strength of a brand through price premium or market share. Moreover, strong brands build emotional attachments; they attempt to develop a relationship. 

The ways in which consumers retrieve or compute personal brand ratings play an important role in the assessment. A certain product conjures up certain associations that may not only be about the product. Such associations can be about the merchandise, the setting, or the social ambience (Tibetts, 2003). The strength of the brand of the white wine relies on the associations built in Barbara’s mind.

Researchers on consumer behavior are increasingly turning to the study of the use of metaphors. In the French label, Barbara sees the distinct gold lettering. She thinks that the color gold represents wealth or anything that is associated with expensiveness. She immediately purchases this because she thinks that this will impress her boss. In line with Barbara’s purchasing behavior, Jacobi, Johar and Motrin (1998) state that the interest in metaphors and analogies is likely to increase as advertisers of ever more technological products seek ways to communicate product features in an easily understandable manner. The advertisers of the wine in Barbara’s decision making are successful in this matter. Barbara is under time pressure so part of her decision to purchase lies in the effective, simple and easy communication (shape and form of the bottle, color of the lettering, price, position of the bottle, and its label).

For more than four decades, advertising and marketing researchers have been intrigued by the symbolic properties of products (e.g., Umiker-Sebeok 1987). During that period, it has become increasingly clear that the consumption of any product is richly embroidered by the symbolism of the practices, rituals, and texts surrounding it and, further, that the meanings associated with products are crucial to understanding their exchange value in the marketplace (Hirschman, Scott and Wells, 1998).

 

One of the dominant areas of consumer theory rests on the notion of the consumer as `chooser' (Gabriel and Lang, 1995: 26). Those objects with which one chooses to surround oneself in the home setting are more often than not products of careful choice and selection and may also be freely discarded (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981: 17). Time plays a significant role in purchasing behavior. In Barbara’s case, she could have chosen a wine more practically only if she was not in a hurry.