perception

Should you lead with price? Or should you describe the product first, and then show the price?

There’s now an answer to this long-running marketing question, and it comes via a study using the tools of modern neuroscience.

Guest Post by Jeanna Heeraman

There are many influences behind perception, one of the biggest being psychological. Looking at different attitudes, marketing practice, notable trends and many more, these can all have an impact on an individual’s perception. For example, Lobster used to be seen as a food for the poor, being fed to prisoners. Over time, this perception has completed changed. The price of lobster has dramatically increased and it is now seen as a luxury.

Are you placing your brand in a “bad neighborhood?” The other day, I was contacted by a BBC reporter, Daniel Nasaw, working on a story about highway naming. At first I thought he had contacted the wrong person, but it turned out there was logic behind his query. The core question, sparked by a move by Virginia to allow corporate sponsorship of highways and bridges, was whether a brand should associate itself with a potentially unpleasant experience. 

In difficult economic times, it’s tempting, even logical, to watch your purchases carefully. Most people recognize the need to keep up external appearances for, say, a job interview or an important sales call, they may cut back in areas less visible to others by buying generic products instead of brand names.

What’s better than a chocolate chip cookie? A chocolate chip cookie in a package optimized with neuromarketing. Consumer companies don’t often talk about their neuromarketing efforts, perhaps because of the vaguely scary sound of it all. Some of the rare public windows into neuromarketing studies have been in the packaging area, notably the Campbell’s Soup project. Now we have another packaging study to review, this time involving Gerber baby food and Chips Ahoy cookies.

It’s no surprise that most of us will adjust our own expressed views to those around us. If your friends are raving about the meal you all just ate, you might tend to go with the flow rather than being the solo critic. Perhaps you simply don’t want to annoy your friends or perhaps you think they might have a point.

When we lived in Indiana, our first house was quite ordinary but had one feature some found a little odd: one edge of our little lot was the Michigan state line. An errant frisbee throw required one to retrieve the disc from another state.

Most marketers don’t count religious affiliation or degree of religiosity as key demographics, but a new study suggests perhaps they should. Makers of branded “self expression” items (such as logo apparel or designer sunglasses) in particular may find this segmentation useful.

According to a paper by Ron Shachar (Tel Aviv University and Duke) and co-authors from NYU and Duke, religious people, or even people temporarily in a religious frame of mind, find branded items less appealing than do less religious people.

I came across this wonderful video of Rory Sutherland gave at TED Global last fall. It's worth watching. Here's a preview from the TED site.