Why is that?
Well, the process of perception is constructive.
People construct their interpretations on the fly.
And this process is inherently biased.
It contain, it, the process of perception comes in several different stages.
The first two
stages are, the stages of attention and exposure.
Before you can form any kind of perception,
you need to be exposed to the stimuli.
And you need to pay attention to that stimuli.
Pay attention to what's salient to you.
And we know that that process is very biased.
You only expose yourself to things.
But there's, sometimes there's accidental exposure.
But when
you're consciously exposing yourself to things, many times it's a
function of what you believe, what you're prior beliefs are.
Let me give you an example.
Say you think that a part of town is not safe.
Well, you won't go to that part of town.
You'll stay away from that part of town.
So you won't expose yourself to something you don't think is safe.
As a result, you never have, ability to
change your perception, of that area of town
because you don't collect new data. So we know that exposure can be selective.
Similarly, even if you are exposed to something, if you don't
pay attention to it, again it can affect your, your perceptions.
And we know that there's 2 kinds
of attention, there's voluntary attention, and involuntary attention.
So involuntary attention is something like big bang, and you pay
attention to it regardless of whether you would had intended to.
But for
voluntary attention, that again is selective.
So we have the possibility of selective exposure, and selective attention.
That means you're not collecting data on things that
might be, might be able to change your perception.
So that's first stage of bias.
The second stage of bias is once you are exposed to something,
and if you pay attention to it, then you have to interpret it.
And we know
that you interpret data subject to what you already believe.
So for example, most people know if
you watch a presidential debate, it's important
to have representatives who in interpret what
happened in the debate from both parties.
Because we know a priori, the interpretations are
going to vary based on their prior beliefs.
And, that's the same thing for any kind of consumer behavior.
You're exposed, pay attention to certain stimuli.
But you interpret it subject to your prior expectations.
As a result of this, perceptions are frequently
biased, and they don't necessarily represent what's true.
So what's the overview of the perceptual process?
You're expo, there are sensory inputs that the marketer puts out.
There's, we're going to talk about it,
brand communication, there's advertising, there's packaging.
All sorts of different, sensory inputs.
And then you are
exposed to them, or you're not.
And sometimes the exposure, as I mentioned, is in a bias, bias way.
And then, even if you are exposed to these inputs, you know,
and you're exposed to thousands of
marketing measures, marketing cues every single day.
But how many of them do you pay attention to?
So, first there's the issue of exposure.
Then there's the issue of whether or not you pay attention to it.
And finally, there's the issue of interpretation.