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Unit 9: Motivation and Perception

14. A consumer’s selection of stimuli from the environment depends on the outcome of Notes
interaction between ………………………, motives and stimulus factors.

15. …………….. refers to the lowest level at which an individual can experience a sensation.
9.12 Summary

Scholars and researchers have identified four major psychological factors – motivation,
perception, learning and, beliefs and attitudes that influence consumers’ buying behaviour.

Motivation is said to be the driving force within individuals produced by a state of tension
caused by unfulfilled needs, and wants.

Need has been defined as a felt state of deprivation of some basic satisfaction. The point
is that this deprivation has to be felt to drive the individual to seek satisfaction.
Some of these needs are basic to sustaining life and are born with individuals. These basic
needs are also called physiological needs or biogenic needs and include the needs for air,
water, food, shelter, sleep, clothing, and sex. Physiological needs are primary needs or
motives because they are essential to survival.
Human behaviour is goal oriented. Marketers are particularly interested in consumers’
goal-oriented behaviour that concerns product, service or brand choice.

Motivational intensity represents how strongly individuals are motivated to satisfy a
particular need. Sometimes the need to satisfy a particular motive may be very strong and
at other times the intensity may be only modest. Failure to achieve a goal often gives rise
to feelings of frustration. Probably there is nobody who has not experienced frustration
that comes from the inability to achieve some goal. Individuals react differently to
frustration. Some are adaptive and find a way to circumvent the barrier while some others
choose a substitute goal if modified efforts fail.
For many years, psychologists and others have attempted to develop a comprehensive list
of motives. Most authorities agree about specific physiological needs but there is marked
disagreement about specific psychogenic or secondary needs. Information processing
involves a series of activities by which stimuli are recognised, perceived, transformed
into meaningful information and stored in memory (short-term or long-term).
Reality to an individual is that individual’s perception, a personal phenomenon, on the
basis of which the individual acts or reacts and not on the basis of objective reality. For this
reason, marketers are particularly interested in consumers’ perceptions than their
knowledge of objective reality.
Different individuals may be exposed to the same stimuli under the same conditions but
how each individual recognises the stimuli, selects them, organises them and interprets
them is unique in case of each person and depends on his needs, wants, values, beliefs,
personal experiences, moods and expectations. Perception is also influenced by the
characteristics of the stimuli, such as size, colour and intensity, etc., and the context in
which it is seen or heard.

All the selected stimuli from the environment are not experienced as separate and discrete
sensations. Individuals tend to organise these sensations into a coherent pattern and perceive
them as unified wholes. The specific principles underlying perceptual organisation are
sometimes referred as Gestalt psychology.

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