Answer to Question #213538 in Management for Prabhdeep

Question

SUBJECT : ADVERTISING AND SALES MANAGEMENT

How (Elaborate in points) does selection work in a consumer's response to an advertisement? Explain the difference (at least 8 differences ) between selective exposure, selective distortion, and selective retention ?

Answer 1

How does selection work in a consumer's response to an advertisement?

Consumer buyer behavior is a learned behavior. Consumers learn their buyer behavior through drives, cues, responses and reinforcement, and each one builds on the other. These processes are why marketers use repetition in their advertising campaigns.

Consumers first experience drive in regard to the advert. Drives re strong internal stimuli inside the consumer's mind that create calls for action. If strong enough, these calls for action create a motive and lead the consumer to try to move towards the object that satisfies the need.

The consumer drives create cues. Cues are minor stimuli that condition the consumer's behavior. They help a consumer make a decision on when, where and how to respond to a drive.

Consumers then make a response. Responses are consumers' actions based off drives, motives and cues from environmental stimuli.

Consumer responses build reinforcement. Reinforcement influences the consumer's future buyer behavior. If the purchase experience is positive, then the consumer may consider buying the same product in the future. If the consumer experience is somewhat negative, they are likely to seek a different product when the need has to be fulfilled again.

Explain the difference between selective exposure, selective distortion, and selective retention ?

Selective exposure is the tendency for consumers to screen out most of the information they are exposed to. Marketers have to work very hard to get consumers' attention.

Selective distortion is the tendency to interpret information in a way that fits one's preconceptions. Consumers will often distort information to be consistent with prior brand beliefs.

Selective retention is the tendency of consumers to remember the good points they favor and forget the negative points that have been made to other brands they don't like.

Selective distortion and selective retention often work to the advantage of marketers with strong brands when consumers distort neutral brand information to make it more positive.

Selective exposure is harder to achieve than selective distortion and selective retention because it's easier to position a product into an existing attitude than to fight against them and try to instill change. Consumer attitudes are very hard to change.

Factors that influence selective retention include sleep, education and schooling and pictorial and visual learning.

Factors influencing selective distortion include: attitudes, previous experience, conditioning, age, race and emotional state.

Selective exposure, on the other hand, depends on what stimuli consumers will notice. Generally, people are more likely to notice stimuli relating to a current need, stimuli they anticipate or stimuli whose deviations are large relative to normal size of the stimuli.