Perception refers to how consumers analyze and judge a brand or product through advertisements and the experiences of surrounding people regarding it. In an advertisement or marketing campaign, consumers will note down the factors that interest them and disregard the ones that don’t. For example, if a consumer is looking for a car with good mileage, he will notice the claims about mileage and ignore the rest of the ads. How customers perceive a brand or product decides how likely they are to buy it. Consumers continuously synthesize all the information they have about a company to form a decision about whether that company offers value. Consumer perception is basically an approximation of reality. Businesses attempt to influence this perception of reality, sometimes through trickery and manipulation, but often just by presenting themselves in the best possible light.
That is the main thing that is affected by the first experience that customers have with a start-up. It affects the perception of customers about that brand and eventually impacts the brand identity and awareness. All these factors that affect the perception of customers about a product also affect its success rate and market gain. Buyers mostly resort to product and service reviews given by previous customers to get the required information to form a perception about the product. Reviews and complaints help consumers get the information that is not mentioned in ads or sales copies. For example, although many brands claim to sell green products that are biodegradable, degradable, or compostable, they don’t. Many brands have been found to do so. Even so, they get to boost their sales through green marketing.
That is because the eco-friendliness of a product is continuously being perceived as a need by consumers across the globe, and thus marketers are using that acquired as well as innate need to drive purchases. The consumers keep several goals and motives in mind while choosing a product. They can be fixed like a specific size, shape, color, or miles per gallon of petrol that a vehicle uses. These needs and goals drive them to buy certain products that satisfy all their requirements. The marketing managers manipulate those drives to portray a specific product as the ideal choice for a consumer. The needs of a consumer are ever-changing and ever-growing. Once a particular requirement or demand gets fulfilled, consumers start looking for a better option, and they set a higher goal for the product. To avoid being cheated, tricked, or trapped, it is always better to look over the complaints that previous customers have about it. You can find complaints about companies here.