Page 81 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes Perception
Perception is the process by which an individual selects, organises, and interprets stimuli into a
meaningful and coherent picture of the world. Stimuli may include products, packages, brand
names, advertisements and commercials, etc. Perception is an individual process and depends
on internal factors such as an individual’s beliefs, experiences, needs, moods, and expectations.
Perception is also influenced by the characteristics of stimuli such as the size, colour, and intensity,
and the context in which it is seen or heard.

Example: If you perceive that Tata Sky is the best DTH service provider, you are likely
to buy Tata Sky when you decide to get a DTH connection.

Self Assessment

Fill in the Blanks:
13. Your family is a kind of....................... group that influences your purchase decisions.

14. A business association is a kind of....................... group.
15. An individual’s lifestyle can be ascertained by his activities, interests and.......................
16. ....................... refers to how an individual thinks about himself/herself.

Case Study Psychographic Profiles—Key to Buyers’ Mind

onsumer buying research has turned over a new leaf in India. The era of
demographics seems to be on the backbench. Now, Marketing Research people
Care less likely to first ask you about your age, income, education, etc. Instead,
there is a distinct shift towards inquiries about attitudes, interests, lifestyles, and
behaviour—in short, a shift towards a study of consumers’ minds called psychographics.
Pathfinders, the marketing research wing of Lintas, occasionally came out with its highly
respected “Study on the Nation’s Attitudes and Psychographics (P:SNAP).” The first in this
series was released in 1987 with an objective to develop a database of lifestyles and
psychographics information on the modern Indian woman. The second was in 1993, and the
third in 1998. Pathfinders chose the Indian woman as the subject for the study because of the
belief that more often than not, in urban areas, it is the woman who makes buying decisions.
The Pathfinders’ study involves interviewing over 10,000 women over the entire country
and segmenting them in clusters according to their beliefs, attitudes, lifestyles, and lastly
their demographics profile. The idea is to identify groups of consumers with similar lifestyles
who are likely to behave identically or very similarly towards products or services.
For advertisers and advertising agencies, this profile helps enormously. For example, an
advertiser may want to give a westernised touch to a commercial. The profile of the target
customer, as revealed by this study, tells the advertising people the perimeter within
which she/he must stay, otherwise the ad may become an exaggerated version of
westernised India.
For the purpose of this study, Pathfinders divided the Indian woman into 8 distinct clusters
of varying values and lifestyles. Figures from two studies are available publicly and are
given below:
Contd...

74 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY