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Chapter 2
End-of-Chapter Questions: Suggested Approaches
1. Identify and discuss some of the widely used techniques to gain and hold consumer attention. Conduct an experiment to test your ideas.
There are a variety of techniques to gaining attention, including the use of colour. Generally, colour rather than black and white gains more attention and indeed different colours have different attention values. The warm colours (orange and red) advance toward us in our perception having the effect of making whatever it is appear larger, whereas the cooler colours (blue) recede in our perception making the message appear smaller. On this basis red is often cited as having the highest attention value.
Movement is another technique. Film, in television or cinema advertising, are often considered as being able to gain greater attention than static press messages. However, it is possible to simulate movement in a still picture and this is often done effectively with blurred backgrounds suggesting a moving foreground, for instance, the speeding sports car.
In a classic case in USA a whisky company supplied display racks to a department store. Whenever a customer physically got close to the rack, a mechanism in the rack released a bottle so it fell, only a short way, to be held again by the rack. This was wonderfully successful at gaining attention, nearly all the customers lunged forward to try to catch the falling bottle. However, although this achieved the aims of the attention stage, it had negative effects on subsequent stages, being thought of as a rather 'sneaky' trick. There is an important message here. Whatever happens in one stage can affect other stages. In this case the attitudes formed were somewhat negative, even though the attention was supremely achieved.
The position of the message is also important in gaining attention. The back outside cover of a magazine, for example, means that the message can be noticed even without opening the magazine at all. Some believe that the right-hand page attracts more attention than the left because as we leaf through the pages from the beginning, it is the right page that is uncovered first. Those, however, who start with the sports page on the rear of a newspaper may well disagree and argue that the left hand page is the one that is usually noticed first! If a double-page spread is employed then there are no competing messages and so attention could be more likely because of this.
The size of the message has also been the focus of marketing discussion. This is not, however, a straightforward matter. Doubling the size of a message is unlikely to double attention. A suggestion is that attention increases as the square root of the message size.
Another approach to gaining attention uses what might be described as known conditioned responses. We attend, almost automatically, to the sound of a telephone ringing and this approach is used to good effect in radio advertising. Other examples include the introduction to a radio advertisement with a statement such as 'Here is a news flash'. The Avon advertisement using a ringing door bell and 'Avon calling' slogan, is another well-known example.
If a message is in some way different then because of this contrast it can stand out and attract more attention. Novelty messages such as upside down ones in print media or something that is unusual fit into this category. The use of technology is another example. The use of computer displays in shop windows was once considered new and different and attracted attention for these reasons. The problem of course is that novelty only lasts a short time so the employment of this approach must be especially dynamic in order to maintain the novelty element.
One poster advertisement for Levi jeans actually had a pair of 501s glued to the poster itself. The result was that many people clearly noticed the message because many of them tried to get the jeans, but of course they were positioned too high on the poster for this to be an easy matter. Another version of this also involved a poster. A Ford car was glued to the poster, which was advertising Araldite, not Ford! A later version of this series actually saw two cars glued to each other on the poster.
It is not only important to attract the attention of consumers, but also to hold the attention and get the message across. Attention getting devices are many, but if this attention is attracted by methods that do not fit with the message or the situation, the attention is readily lost. Even irritation might result from these artificial attention getting devices, as in the whisky bottle example. The ad with the word SEX may attract attention, but if the message has nothing to do with sex, irritation and a negative connotation may result.
Attention may be hold through 'participation'. These messages might be ambiguous or incomplete and for this reason the audience (sometimes through a 'double take') will attend to the message more than would otherwise be the case, in order to 'complete' the message and to make sense of it. This is explored further in 4c.
Students could set up experiments among their peers or ‘real’ respondents to assess the extent to which messages are noticed and attended to: using different colours, or typefaces, ambiguity and novelty and so on. They might use student notice-boards in different buildings or faculties so that experimental and control groups might be operationalised.
2. What is perception? Discuss the role of our five senses in perception. Use some common examples to illustrate.
Here, students can use examples of how they themselves use sight, sound, touch, smell and taste in their own buying behaviour. This will clearly apply more to products than services and the degree of importance attached to each sense can be explored.
An issue that might be worth discussion is on-line buying behaviour, where sight and sound are generally the only senses available. Does the absence of other sensory inputs restrict the internet in its ability to offer what consumers want in their search for the right product ? Could virtual shopping assistants help overcome any of the obstacles here?
3. Services are characterised by many features such as their intangibility. Using examples of your own, discuss the impact of intangibility on services advertising. How can marketers resolve those problems?
Exhibit 2.24 in the text provides a good framework for this question. But students must come up with their own application of theory via examples from their own experience, reading or imagination.
Exhibit 2.24: Creative approaches to improve consumers’ perceptions of services
Creative Message Treatment / ExamplesShow the physical components of a service delivery process. / The AA van rescuing a stranded customer
Focus on the tangibles / Show physical facilities, equipment, appearance of personnel
Use vivid information / Any information that creates very strong mental image of service
Use specific and concrete language / ‘strong research capability’
, ‘sound analysis’, ‘experts in delivery’
Use relevant tangible objects to improve comprehension / ‘Under the Traveller’s Umbrella’
‘The Nationwide blanket of protection’
Use interactive imagery / Direct Line’s use of moving telephone, Lombard Direct’s use of talking telephone
Present objectively document data on past performance / The punctuality record of a train company
Show a typical service delivery event / An employee going out of the way to help a customer
Show testimonials from customers about some aspect of service / A letter from a satisfied customer
Show a typical customer experiencing the service / A customer getting a good deal for his home insurance; ‘Quote me happy’campaign by Norwich Union Direct
Encourage people to speak positively about the service and use personal endorsement / BT’s use of ‘It’s Good to Talk’campaign
Educate customers for service process / Easyjet’s website providing information to customers about what they need to do during the service delivery.
Communicate back stage operations, rules and policies to improve confidence / A service company showing their backstage operations in a TV ad.
Use dramaturgy / AA’s dramatic use of service delivery process
4. Select some press advertisements or packages that are good illustrations of the use of any of the following:
a)Perception of colour
b)Use of visual illusions
c)Ambiguity and participation
This exercise tests students’ ability to use and apply course material to specific examples.
Again advertisements provide the context and each selected concept should be applied.
Different colours can transmit different meanings and emotions. Most colours have both positive and negative meanings and of course different colours are more or less fashionable at different points in time. Furthermore, different colours can mean different things in different countries, thus making any generalisations almost impossible to make.
However, in western cultures, red is often seen as being a fiery, passionate colour; white as being pure and virginal; black as being mysterious, perhaps wicked but sometimes smart. Yellow might be seen as being cheerful but also sometimes as being to do with deceit and cowardice. In other cultures mistakes can easily, but foolishly, be made.
Packaging garden products in green might not be controversial but in Malaysian markets this can mean jungle and disease. The funeral colour of black, in the UK has no major taboo attached to it, but the funeral colour of other countries is not always black and sometimes should not be used outside the funeral context.
If your class includes international students it would be fun and informative to elicit their reactions to the use of different colours for products, packaging and promotion.
b) Students can draw from perception theory to demonstrate how pack and product design can influence how consumers interpret marketing activity. For example, in fashion the patterns, designs and how garments are cut can affect the visual interpretation of them, especially on different body shapes. This should be a lively exercise and at the same time bring out the power of visual illusions. Other examples can, of course, be in terms of pack design, using the law of continuity to extend the ‘line’ of the pack more in one direction than another (in the mind of the consumer).
This links with other perception issues: Visual illusions and the use of figure-ground relationships and colour, in the graphics within advertising messages, for example.
c) Some classic Benson and Hedges advertisements depicted something ambiguous, a packet of B&H in a parrot cage with the shadow of the parrot being projected onto the wall behind the cage. Or, the depiction of one of the stones at Stonehenge as a packet of cigarettes. These provide a sort of game. Hunt the pack, where will it be this time? A pyramid in the dessert? In any case, there is some participation in the approach on the part of the receiver of the message that is needed and this means more effective attention getting.
Ambiguity and participation introduces Gestalt psychology. Here, students will probably have little difficulty in finding examples of incomplete messages because this is very much in vogue and indeed a favourite approach in youth markets. One reason is because Generation X appears to require a more involving and less ‘hard hitting’ advertising approach. The application of Gestalt psychology provides incomplete messages which require a degree of participation to complete them. Also, the approach has been said to be more appropriate for more individualistic segments because of the greater variety of interpretation that can be put on the message and because the rather more ‘off the wall’/surreal approach, this is, by definition, less ‘mainstream’ and can be seen to appeal more to those who don’t want to feel part of the mainstream.
Students will, no doubt, bring examples from the style press where many such advertisements will be found. Many beer advertisements are probably to be expected !
5. Provide examples of the JND principle from price, pack and product changes. Conduct an experiment to measure the JND for a change in the price of a brand of beer.
Students can bring examples of small changes in the price of a product or service have been made over time such that the overall change from 1st to last change is significant but not necessarily noticed.
The same could be applied to pack designs, logos and even product features. Cars might provide good examples of the latter, where radiator grill and minor interior or engine changes appear small from one model change to another, but over the years can amount to more major changes.
The presentation of each incremental change to respondents can form the basis of an experiment. A time lag would be needed between exposures but respondents might not be able to spot the differences each time of presentation. Where if another group of respondents were shown the first and last change only, the size of the overall movement might be clearly noticed.