Page 179 - DMGT551_RETAIL_BUSINESS_ENVIRONMENT

Retail Business Environment

Notes Physical Appearance: People may or may not consciously recognise that they tend to
attribute the qualities, which in their opinion are associated with certain individuals, to
others who may resemble those persons. According to Kathleen Debevec and Jerome B
Kernan, research indicates that attractive looking men are perceived as more successful in
business than average looking men. Attractive models in ads and commercials prove
more persuasive and have a more positive impact on consumer attitudes and behaviour
than average looking models. This has important implications in selecting the models for
ads or commercials, as it may be the key factor in their ability to be persuasive.

Stereotyping Stimuli: People tend to form “pictures” in their minds of the meanings of
different types of stimuli. This stereotyping the stimuli helps them develop expectations
about how specific events, people, or situations will turn out to be. For example, many
people carry the “picture” of politicians or police behaviour in their minds.
Irrelevant Stimuli: In certain situations consumers are faced with difficult perceptual
judgements. In such circumstances they often respond to somewhat irrelevant stimuli. For
instance, they may consider the colour of washing machine in making the final purchase
decision. In case of expensive cars, consumers often give importance to the shape of
headlamps, or leather upholstery rather than technical features.

First Impression: First impressions are often lasting even when the perceiver is not exposed
to sufficient relevant or predictive information.
For instance, just a few years ago, the word “imported” was enough for a large number of
consumers to form favourable impressions about many products such as wristwatches,
shoes, clothes and many other different products.

Jumping to Conclusions: Some people seem to have a strong tendency to draw conclusions
based on insufficient information. They seem to be impatient about examining all the
relevant evidence, which may be necessary to draw a balanced conclusion. This is often
the reason that strong arguments about a product or service are presented first in ads.
Halo Effect: This refers to a tendency to evaluate one attribute or aspect of stimulus to
distort reactions to its other attributes or properties. This is frequently seen in case of
brand or line extensions where the marketer takes advantage of a brand’s reputation.

Example: Dettol soap, Lux shampoo and Ponds soap, etc.

9.7 Perceived Product and Service Quality

Consumers often tend to assess the quality of a product or service on the basis of different types
of information they relate with the product or service. Intrinsic cues (cues are stimuli that direct
motives) relate to the physical attributes of the product such as the size, colour, or smell etc.,
which are sometimes used to judge the quality of a product. For example, quality of perfumes is
often judged on the basis of fragrance, physical appearance of the container, packaging and its
colour. Many detergent powders and cakes are traditionally coloured blue to influence the
perceived quality because consumers associate “bluing” with brightening and whitening their
laundry. Consumers like to be thought of as objective or rational in their assessment of products
and believe that their product choices are based on intrinsic cues. It is a different matter that
quite often the physical attributes considered to judge the quality have no intrinsic relationship
with product quality. For example, consumers who claim that one brand of soft drink is tastier
than the other often fail in blind taste tests. According to Michael J. McCarthy, consumers often
fail to differentiate among different cola drinks and actually base their preference on extrinsic
cues such as advertising, pricing, packaging or even group pressure.

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