In: Accounting
An advertising agency president says, “Perception is reality.” What does he mean by this? How is perception important to marketers?
Buying behavior is driven by customers’ perceptions of value. Such perceptions are built over time by various contributing factors such as brand, word of mouth, personal past experience with the product or service, etc. Hopefully, when the advertising agency president is speaking such a sentence they do not mean that quality does not matter. Rather, they mean that while quality is important, it should also be promoted and understood by the customer base of interest for it to be of any profitable use.
Perception is the process by which a person selects, organizes, and interprets information to create a meaningful picture of the world. It is the meaning that the person attributes to incoming stimuli received through the five senses. People can form different perceptions of the same stimuli because people not only perceive what there is to be perceived but also perceive what they want to perceive through selective exposure, selective distortion and selective retention. People are constantly both consciously and unconsciously attaching meaning to the world; for them, perception IS reality.
Customer buying behavior is driven by perceived value shaped by brand, word of mouth, and personal experience, emphasizing quality promotion.