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Selective Attention

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Selective Attention
SELECTIVE ATTENTION, DISTORTION AND RETENTION
A motivated person is ready to act. How he motivated person actually acts is influenced by his or her view or perception of the situation. Perception is the process by which an individual selects, organizes, and interprets information inputs to create a meaningful picture the world. Perception depends not only on the physical stimuli, but also on the stimuli’s relation to the surrounding field and on conditions within the individual. The key point is that perception can vary widely among individuals exposed to the same reality. One person might perceive a fast-talking salesperson as aggressive and insincere another may perceive the same sales person as intelligent and helpful. Each will respond differently to the salesperson.
In marketing, perceptions are more important than the reality, as it is perceptions that will affect consumers’ actual behavior. People can emerge with different perceptions of the same object because of three perceptual processes: selective attention, selective distortion, and selective retention.
Selective Attention:
It has been estimated that the average person may be exposed to over 1,500 ads or brand communications a day. Because a person cannot possibly attend to all of these stimuli will be screened out-a process called selective attention. Selective attention means that marketers have to work hard to attract consumers notice. The real challenge is to explain which stimuli people will notice. Here are some findings:
1. People are more likely to notice stimuli that relate to a current need. A person who is motivated to buy a computer will notice computer ads; he or she will be less likely to notice DVD ads.
2. People are more likely to notice stimuli that they anticipate. You are more likely to notice computers than radios in a computers store because you do not expect the store to carry radios.
3. People are more likely to notice stimuli whose deviations are large in relation to

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