Financing and Marketing Management

Unit 14 - Marketing Environment-Consumer Behaviour

14.7. Selective Attention

People are exposed to a tremendous amount of daily stimuli. Looking at commercial stimuli alone, the average person may be exposed to over fifteen-hundred ads a day. A person cannot possibly attend to all of these stimuli. The real challenge is to explain which stimuli people will notice. Here are some findings:

• People are more likely to notice stimuli that relate to a current need. Margaret will notice most computer ads because she is motivated to buy one; she will probably not notice stereo-equipment ads.
• People are more likely to notice stimuli that they anticipate. Margaret is more likely to notice computers than radios in a computer store because she did not expect the store to carry radios.
• People are more likely to notice stimuli whose deviations are large in relation to the normal size of the stimuli. Margaret is more likely to notice an ad offering $100 off the list price of an Apple computer than one offering $5 off the list price.

Selective attention means that marketers have to work hard to attract consumer attention. Their messages will be lost on most people who are not in the market for the product. Even people who are in the market may not notice a message unless it stands out from the surrounding sea of stimuli.