Perception And Your Brand

How does perception influence your brand and the quality that people associate with it In order to answer this questions, we must first understand what perception is and the influences of it.

Perception is the process by which an individual select, organises, and interprets stimuli into a meaningful and coherent picture of the world.

In other words, perception is one’s understanding of the world. This understanding is influenced by two factors:

• The stimuli our senses are absorbing
• Our previous experiences

How Packaging Influences Perception

Packaging can have an enormous influence on how consumer’s perceive a product. This is prevalent in Zealong Tea’s efforts.

The packaging of the product has been created in a special way so that it is an effort to unpack it. This creates a ritual for the consumer as they must open the product in a unique fashion every time. This does a few things.

1. It builds trust as the same thing is happening over and over for the consumer when they buy Zealong Tea.
2. It creates the feeling of the product being a special product, as so much effort is put into tacking off the packaging.

This effect has been multiplied through the use of augmented reality technology, as can be seen in the video above.

Moving Beyond Attention

Before you can actually influence a consumer’s perception about your product or brand, you must first grab their attention. There are so many distractions in today’s day and age that consumer’s can easily miss you if you don’t make a stand!

This can be achieved through targeting specific consumer sensory systems. For example:

• Vision: creating enticing visual elements in ads, store design, and packaging.
• Smell: odours can stir emotions and create feelings such as hunger/happiness.
• Sound: research has analyzed effects of background music and speaking rates in stores on the consumer. As such, sound can be used in video content to attract user’s attention online.
• Touch: this has been shown to be a factor in sales interactions as it builds trust.

While we cannot influence the consumer’s previous experiences (which has an influence on their perception), we can at least influence the physical stimuli presented to them, which can influence their perception about your product or brand.