What can influence product perception? Also, what factors influence consumer behavior?


Perception can be defined as the process of recognition of sensory stimuli such as touch, vision, smell, sound etc. and interpreting them (Solomon, 2015). The needs, want and demands of each and every customer is unique as their perception is different towards the same product or services. For instance, one customer can perceive iPhone as luxurious product and can be one of the loyal customers of this brand. In the same time, another customer may not like the features of iPhone and rather he loves to use the Samsung mobile. They have different perception towards the same product, so, they tend to show different preferences.
The customer’s perception towards a product can be influenced by his/her own experiences with that product, and also his/her family and friend’s opinions towards that product. In addition, the packaging and brand name of product, price and quality of the product and services also influences the perception of consumer (Rawat, 2014). For instances, if we saw a highly decorated restaurant with designed furniture’s then, we may perceive that service of restaurant can be expensive. In the same manner, opinion leader, posts in social networking sites, celebrity also influences the perception of consumers towards a product. For instance, one of my friends has perception of fraud for the beggar. But, when he saw reality show hosted by his favorite celebrity on the story of beggar, which changed his perception of thinking them as fraud.
            The consumer behavior can be influenced by social factors such as references groups, status and roles in the society, family’s preferences etc. For instance, if father of a family is planning to buy a bike, then the potential model and brand of bike to purchase can be influenced by the interest of the son. In the same manner, the economic factors such as size of disposable income, numbers of members in the family, tendency to consume also influences the behavior of the people. The cultural factor such as values, religion, belief, social class, arts also affect the consumer behavior. For example, wearing of short clothes and expose of body part is not acceptable in the Muslim community while it is common in the western culture. Moreover, personal factors such as age, occupation, personality, life style also influence what, how, and why consumer buys. For instances, my father is teacher by profession so, mostly, he loves to buy formal suits rather than informal t-shirts. Another major factor to influence the consumer behavior is psychological factors such as belief and attitude of a person, perception, motivation and learning pattern (Gajjar, 2013).
References

Rawat, S. (2014). Factors affecting consumer perception. Retrieved form http://www.slideshare.net/sauravrawat9/factors-affecting-consumer-perception

Solomon, M.R. (2015). Consumer behavior: Buying, having and being. New Jearsey. Pearson Education, Inc.

Gajjar, D. N. (2013). Factors affecting Consumer Behavior. International Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 1(2).




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