Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

Segmentation, targeting and positioning together comprise a three stage process. We first (1) determine which kinds of customers exist, then (2) select which ones we are best off trying to serve and finally (3) implement our segmentation by optimizing our products/services for that segment and communicating that we have made the choice to distinguish ourselves that way.

Segmentation
This is made up of people or organisations with one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and /or services based on the qualities of those products such as price and function. It involves finding out different the kinds of consumers and the different needs that exist between them. In the auto market, for example, some consumers demand speed and performance, while others are much more concerned about roominess and safety. In general, it holds true that “You cannot be all things to all people”, and experience has demonstrated that firms that specialise in meeting the needs of one group of consumers over another tend to be more profitable.

Generically, there are three approaches to marketing. In the undifferentiated strategy, all consumers are treated as the same, with firms not making any specific efforts to satisfy particular groups. This may work when the product is a standard one where one competitor really cannot offer more than another one can.

Targeting
Targeting is the second stage of the segment Target position process. After the market has been separated into segments, the marketer will select a segment or series of segments and 'target' it/them. Resources and effort will be targeted at the segment. Target marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or few key segments. Target market can be the key to a small business's success. Target marketing is makes the promotion, pricing and distribution of your products and/or services easier and more cost effective. Target marketing provides a focus to all of your marketing activities.

Positioning
A product can be positioned based on 2 main platforms namely The Consumer and The Competitor. When the positioning is on the basis of Consumer, the campaigns and messages are always targeted to the consumer themselves. The other kind of positioning is on basis of Competition. These campaigns are targeted towards competing with other players in the market.

Dettol television commercials always concentrate on advertisements, which show that this product would give you more protection, than the others.

Posting by product attributes and benefits:
Associating a product with an attribute, a product feature or a consumer feature. Sometimes a product can be positioned towards two or more attributes simultaneously. The price/ quality attribute dimension is commonly used for positioning the products.

A common approach is setting the brand apart from competitors on the basis of the specific characteristics or benefits offered. Sometimes a product may be positioned on more than one product benefits; marketers' may attempt to identify salient attributes.

Below is a slide show demonstrating a step by step process of segmenting, targeting, and positioning 
http://www.slideshare.net/mehmetcihangir/segmentation-targeting-and-positioning-presentation

Personality and Self-concept

Personality

Personality is defined by Ryckman, R. (2004) as a person’s unique make-up, which consistently influences the way that person responds to his or her environment.

Personality reflects individual differences and unique combination of inner characteristics; no two individuals are exactly alike. Personality allows marketers to divide people into different groups based on their traits. Marketers cannot change consumers’ personalities to meet their products, however, understanding which specific characteristics attract required responses, can help marketers to appeal to these traits in their target audience.

Personality can change as it may be altered by major life events such as the birth of a child, death of a loved one, and personal tragedies, for example an accident, health problem, divorce or significant career promotion. Personality changes can also be part of the maturing process. It can be assumed that women’s personality in general changes faster as they grow older.

Self-concept
Self-concept is “the beliefs a person hold about his or her own attributes as well as how he or she evaluates those qualities” (Solomon, 1999). Self-concept can also be defined as the totality of individuals’ thoughts and feelings having reference to him/her as an object. It consist of self-assessments, features assessed include but are not limited to personality, skills and abilities to name a few. A person's self-concept may change with time as he/she reassesses oneself. Furthermore, the self-concept is not restricted to the present but it includes past selves as well as future selves.

Self-concept theory

Carl Rogers (1947), the most influential and eloquent voice in self-concept theory introduced an entire system of helping build around the importance of self. In Roger’s opinion, the self is the central ingredient in human personality and personal adjustment. The theory is based on the notion that individuals have a concept of themself based on who they think they are (the actual self) and who they think they would like to be (the ideal self). This is related to two key concepts of psycho- analytic theory, the ego and the super ego. The ego is similar to one’s objective reality; therefore it is similar to the actual self. Whilst the super-ego is defined by the way things should be and hence can be seen as a reflection of the mind (Gay 1989).

Actual Self

There is no one actual self. Consumers have various role identities for example a mother, who is a wife, working woman and volunteer. One of these roles becomes dominant in specific situations. This particular role affects the behaviour of the individual (dressing style, talking, way they conduct). The amalgam of individuals’ roles makes up the individual self.

Studies have confirmed that consumers buy products related to their self-concept
This has been depicted in a study carried out by Dolich. The researcher studied buying of beers, cigarettes, soaps and tooth-paste and found that respondents tend to prefer brands they rate similar to themselves. The same is thought to apply to automobiles too.

Marketing takes away the concept of the ‘actual self’, the image consumers have of themselves influences their purchases. They attain ‘self-consistency’, by buying products they perceive as similar to their self-concept.

Further reading:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19974746/Personality-Self-Concept

Ideal Self

The concept of the ideal self relates to one’s self esteem. The greater the difference between the actual-self and the ideal self, the lower an individual’s self-esteem. An individual’s dissatisfaction with the actual self will result in purchases of such products that he/she think will enhance his/her self-esteem. 

      

Learning, Memory and Nostalgia!

Today's learning outcome will focus on learning, memory and nostalgia on a person's behaviour and attitude towards purchasing products or the influence on them by the marketers.

 Memory and nostalgia

Defined in a marketing context by Britt (1955) as 'Every time an advertisement or commercial appears, the objective is to have the reader or viewer learn something and remember what he learned'. Rice (1977) suggests that marketings' ultimate aim is to teach them brand loyalty'. 


Learning

Solomon (2006) states that 'learning refers to a permanent change in behaviour, which comes with experience'. 

This impacts on individuals as when they see repeated adverts they tend to remember and learn what message the advert is trying to deliver across to them. The message getting across to the audience successfully achieves the marketers aim of the advertisement purpose. Therefore, the aims of the product promotion will be successfully achieved.

Learning links to memory as it is seen as getting the knowledge out of what individuals tend to see, therefore this links to memory as the knowledge is stored in the memory. This relates to commercials as when individuals see adverts the aim of the advert is for its audience to remember and learn about it.

Memory

Memory is an individual's ability to store, retain and recall information and experiences. Blakemore (1988) states that "learning is the acquisition of knowledge and memory is the storage of internal representations of that knowledge”.

Memory processes when individuals gain information, which they store in their memory therefore the information is kept in their memory so when they need to use it they can. Solomon (2006) states that 'memory involves a process of acquiring information and tends to store it over time, so it is available when needed'. This relates to marketing as when individuals look at an advertisement they tend to remember the product if it appeals to them, therefore it becomes stored in their memory. 

Nostalgia
"When a stimulus is capable of recreating a personal event, even after many years, there often follows a bitter-sweet sentiment known as nostalgia” (Dubois 2000). However, Solomon (2006) states that this term is a bitter, sweet emotion where the past is viewed with sadness and longing. This can impact on people in various ways, for example people can see an object which relates to their past and this can bring back old memories for them. This again relates to certain smells or perfumes that people can relate to from their past.

ADS Using Nostalgic triggers

M&S:- http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tFVivTXlaEo&feature=related

Super bowl ads article:- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/MNPLUR873.DTL

Nostalgia could also be a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time for example a nostalgia for an individual's college days (Solomon 2006). 

Organisations tend to use this method within their advertising process as this helps them to gain customers attention as it impacts on the audiences emotions and makes people think about the past again, this encourages the customers to relate or gain that certain 

product/service again.

Organisations tend to use this method with people who already have a history with that particular product. For example, old cars reintroduced, this makes people from the older generation remember cars from the olden days. Also, organisations tend to promote and advertise their products on television by using certain themes or songs which takes the audience back into the old days.

Culture

Charity Report

Charity is just as it is perceived by many individuals. It is voluntary giving which occurs in three main forms namely, money, goods and services. Charity has always been a part of many people’s lives and thus has been a viable phenomenon until recently. It has been found that in the United Kingdom charities are facing tough times with recent research showing that donations are down. However, the Mintel report has found that, in general, the consumer is committed to donating and plans to do so at similar levels in the future. There is evidence that some consumers are cutting back and donating goods rather than cash (Mintel 2010).

The decrease in donations, it is hoped, is just for now and is directly attributed to the present state of the economy worldwide. There is evidence that this will change as the Mintel report has found that, in general, the consumer is committed to donating and plans to do so at similar levels in the future. 

Research has found that in the year 2009, it was estimated that charities in England and Wales were just fewer than 180, with a total income of £51.7 billion, with the number of charities falling from 190,541 in 2007 to an estimated 172,194 in 2010, a 18347 difference (Mintel 2010).

Charitable donation is getting popularised with 56% of adults donating to various charitable causes in 2009/10. This was through a number different means of donation namely collection boxes in shops, direct debit, sponsoring an event and giving street collections. The aforementioned were found to be the most popular ways for people to give to charity (Mintel 2010).The number of people giving has also increased a little over the last year, after recent decrease between the year 2007/08 and 2008/09. There is virtually no change in the proportion giving to charity in the long term as donation level has taken a steady stand over the year (CAF 2010).

Women aged 45–64 years is said to be the group most likely to give to charities according to (Mintel 2010), with over 67% of donors being women in 2009/10. They are also said to have given amounts with a median of £15 on average per donor. The differences in giving by occupational groups continue and may be more marked; those in the managerial and professional groups are both the most likely to give (69%) and to give the largest median amount (£19) (CAF 2010).


There is an increasing trend for giving goods rather than cash. Out of those that have not donated (cash) to charity in the last 12 months, two thirds have given unwanted items to charity shops instead. Concern that not enough money goes directly to the cause was the reason for over 57%.

The recession has impacted giving, but research has found that levels are recovering. Over the last year the proportion of people giving has increased slightly, after decreasing between 2007/08and 2008/09 at the time of the recession and increased from £10 in 2008/09 to £12 in 2009/10. The overall amount of £10.6 billion given to charity was an increase in real terms of £400 million compared to £10.2 billion in 2008/09. The popularity of overseas causes increased in 2009/10 almost by one quarter.

In an ambitious global study, the United Kingdom was identified as one of the countries with the highest proportion of adults giving money. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of UK adults reported giving in the last month, lower than Malta (83%) and the Netherlands (77%), and slightly greater than Ireland (72%), Australia (70%) and New Zealand (68%) (NCVO, 2010).

Further reading:

http://www.cafonline.org/pdf/UK20Giving202010_101210.pdf
http://oxygen.mintel.com/sinatra/oxygen/display/id=538933

Generation-Y Marketing

In this episode of Tj's Hard Talk, we reviewed the behaviour of Generation Y. Individuals will be taken through the way they operate, move, think and how differently they manage in the world today.

Teenagers and young adults (the so-called Generation Y) have watched with horror as their parents have worked punishing hours in their scramble for money and status. Now, as this group branch out in search of jobs, they have different priorities. They care less about salaries, and more about flexible working, travel times and a better work-life balance. In response to this shift, employers are having to meet these demands.

The lack of significant downturn in the economy over the past decade and a half has contributed to driving this new attitude of Generation Y, say experts. A research by Talentsmoothie 'Generation Y: what they want from work', concluded that 'they have only ever known economic prosperity. They have many choices, which makes gap years and extensive travel the norm for them. They can work a company, or set up their own business.

They have seen their parents in stressful jobs, working long hours, and have realised that hard work for big companies apparently does not bring prosperity and happiness, or make the world a better place. They want their lives to be different. If they are dissatisfied with their jobs, they resign'.

The study also found that 85 per cent of Generation Y wanted to spend 30 to 70 per cent of their time working from home. In addition, more than half wanted a flexible working arrangement.

The top priority when choosing a job for Generation Y was 'doing work that I love', earning alot of money was way down the list in their reasons for choosing jobs, in seventh place infact. When it came to walking away from an employer, a lack of motivation was the top reason followed by a work-life balance. 'The Boomer generation [who are over 45] created the culture of long working hours and Xers [aged between 28 and 45] reluctantly accepted it,' the report said. 'But not Generation Y. While they are not work-shy, they do not live to work. They will get the job done on time, but on their own terms'.

George Osborne Spending Cuts Review

In 2010 the public of the United Kingdom elected a new government which to them was meant to bring them a better way of living, but instead have brought nothing but pain and misery to many families of the UK. The new government have implemented new changes which has caused thousands of people to loose their jobs, homes, and even their cars.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer,  has revealed the" bloodiest spending cuts since the Second World War today". The radical changes have included raising the pension age to 66, increasing the National insurance contribution and slashing £6 billion from Whitehall.

It has been estimated that one in ten public sector workers will lose their jobs and millions more will be told to take a pay cut or reduce their hours. 

Child Benefit will be withdrawn from families who are higher-rate taxpayers, which is predicted to save £2.5 billion a year. However, Child Benefit will continue to be paid to low-income families until a child leaves full-time education at the age of 18 or 19.

Mr Osborne revealed all working-age benefits and tax credits will be replaced with a single, simple Universal Credit: "No family that doesn't work will receive more in benefits than the average family that does go out to work", he said.

The Chancellor said the Government will deliver £6 billion of Whitehall savings - double the £3 billion promised earlier.

He added the best estimate of the reduction in total public sector jobs is the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast of 490,000 over the four years of the spending review period.

This is a very interesting video high-lighting the issues of George Osborne's cuts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHOFOHDwQvY&feature=related

"There will be some redundancies in the public sector, which is unavoidable when the country has run out of money", said Mr Osborne.

Mr Osborne claimed it will take time "to turn around the debt supertanker": 'In real terms public spending will be at the same level as 2008. Our public services and welfare system will be put on a sustainable footing'.

Mr Osbrone said this spending plans will achieve a balanced structural current budget and falling national debt in the period to 2014/15

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1322004/SPENDING-CUTS-2010-Pension-age-rise-66-2020.html#ixzz1JLokYpue

This is a video of Mr Osborne dishing out his cuts,a joke if you should ask me lol!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/20/spending-review-2010-osborne-cuts

Below is an indepth view of how the cuts will be implemented: 

• £1.15bn in "discretionary" areas such as consultancy and travel costs

• £95m through savings in IT spending

• £1.7bn will be saved in delaying or stopping government contracts and projects

• Reductions in property costs will save £170m

• More than £120m expected to be found through a freeze in civil service recruitment

• £600m by cutting the cost of quangos

• £520m will be saved through other low-value spending

Purchasing behaviour / Husband-Wife

The purpose of analysing family purchase behaviour  is important to assessing individuals' behaviour is often perceived as a homogeneous unit. Family purchasing behaviour is rather essentially a collection of individuals whose interrelationship affect substitutional assets and saving behaviour. It is important to study family purchases and to seek information from different individuals in the family as a basis for a better understanding of the factors influencing their financial attitude and thus their behaviour. 


General trends in the past have shown that for years the wife is the one in control of the money management and in many cases usually make the purchasing decisions. In fact recent research has found the wife exert the main influence on the house, holding 40% of control and authority. The husband on the other hand holds over a quarter of authority and the couple join in the rest (Sharpe and Mott 1996).


In conducting an overall assessment of purchasing recently,it was found that amongst younger more educated middle age couples, they both joined in  the decision making. The husband and wife roles not only vary with the product but with the decision itself. 

Marketing

"There is no doubt that we are in the midst of many changes in the world of marketing and advertising as new technologies are changing the way we view and interact with businesses and products" says Marentis (2009).
The text of a presentation to the American Marketing Association predicted changes in communications media by the year 2000 and their effects on marketing. The cost considerations in marketing distribution has encouraged major innovations through the use of computer systems. It was prdeicted that large-screen, colour, person-to-person television communication would be available well before the year 2000 and this new invention would also influence marketing. Coupled with a large automated information storage and processing base, and equipped with push buttons, the screen and computer has restructured merchandising concepts. Shopping is being done at home via TV display. Consumers are able to select items and compare advertising claims more rationally today than ever before.



It cannot be overemphasised how much the Internet and related new technology has changed the face of marketing communications. Similar to the inception of radio and television affected business communications years ago, the Internet is turning marketing methods of the past on their heads and recreating the environmental landscape of buying and selling. "History has shown there will be winners and losers in the midst of these changes, but you can stay on top by making sure your On-line Marketing and Advertising efforts are current and applicable to today's customer" (Marentis, 2009).



Video on the changes in technology in marketing (really interesting)

http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cellphones_twitter_facebook_can_make_history.html

This video shows how marketing has changed over the years:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NewrL-Tw_Wk&feature=related

With the advent of search engine optimization, video, social media, audio and RSS are just a few of the terms that are becoming an integral part of relevant marketing strategies. A shift in customer thinking and behaviour has required business owners to leave behind old advertising methods and learn how to use these aforementioned tools to reach customers.

While ten years ago a banner ad may have pulled in the customers, today many customers will immediately view the ad skeptically. Replacing traditional advertising are customer recommendations and word-of-mouth through blogs, message boards and other forums.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3545805
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Chris_J_Marentis 

Further reading:
http://changeoftechnologyinmarketing.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

Tj"" Hard Talk

Hello my name is Ti-Jean Brown, a 1st year student at the Bucks New University studying Business management and marketing studies. I will be reporting on a series of blogs where I will discuss various topics which link with the marketing communication skills and operations within businesses.

The term blogger is used to describe "anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives". Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger's website to set the lesser blogger's ego into orbit. 


Then if that blogger gets mentioned on CNN, it is possible that he/she might get more pious than a lesser known blogger. Suddenly the boring, mild-mannered blogger you once knew will turn into Mother Theresa, and will single handedly take it upon himself/herself to end world hunger with his stupid links to band websites and other smug blogger dipshits." - Maddox (2005)

Well I must admit that I had no idea of what blogging was, as I had never heard the term before this course. When I first heard the name, my initial thought was that blogging was similar to emails. However, once I started using it I was hooked. Being able to post information and reading comments left on my blog is very exciting.


Being a personal blogger is a brand new experience that will afford me new skills that should benefit me in the working environment in the future. I hope to be able to apply and transfer these skills to wherever they are needed and continue to practice my typing skills in the process practising my blogging skills!!!

values

Values can be defined as a belief  about some desirable end-state that transcends specific situations and guides selection of behaviour. Values are general and different from attitude in that they do not apply to specific situations only. A person's set of values plays a very important role in their consumption activities, since many products and services are purchased because it will help us to attain a value-related goal.  Two people can believe in the same behaviours (vegetarianism)  but their underlying belief systems may be quite different (animal activism VS health concerns).  The extent to which people may share a belief system is determined by individual social and cultural forces.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUxiiKtdELk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH4rHTJztLU&feature=related

Real life examples
Every one wants to be clean, but some societies are more fastidious than others and will not accept products and services that they think cut corners. Italians spend an average of 21 hours a week on household chores other than cooking whereas in America women only spend 4 hours according to Gambles and Procter research. Italian women wash their bathroom and kitchen at least 4 times a week while American just once a week.  

Unilever thought the Italian market would be the perfect place to introduce a new all purpose cleaning product called 'Cif' which flopped.

When Unilever did a research to find out why their product flopped in Italy, they found that the women were not convinced that 'a mere spray would do the job on though kitchen grease; or that one product will adequietly clean different surfaces', (it turns out that 72% of Italians own more than eight different cleaning products). 

Every culture is characterised by its members and endorsed by their value system. These end-states may not be equally endorsed by everyone, and in some cases their values even seem to contradict each other.

Values in consumer behaviour  

Laues have not been as widely applied to direct examinations of consumer behaviour as might be expected.  The reason for these broad-based concepts such as freedon, security, or inner harmony, are more likely to affect general purchasing patterns rather than to differenciate between brands within a product category. For this reason, some researchers have found it convenient to make distinctions among board-based cutural values such as security or happiness; consumption-specific values such as convient shopping or prompt service, and product-specific values such as ease of use or durability, that affect the relative importance that people in different cultures place on possesions.  

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MEP2y6XEn8&feature=related

A recent study of product-specific values looked in depth at Australians who engage in extreme sports like surfing, snowboarding and skateboarding. These researches identified four dominant vales that drove brand choice: freedom, belongingness , excellence and connection. One example is one female surfer studied embraced the value of belongingness. She expressed these values by wearing popular brands of surfing apparel even when these major brands had lost their local roots by going mainstream. In contrast, another surfer in the study valued connection, he expressed this by selecting only locally made brands and going out of his way to support local surfing events.   

A number companies track changes in values through large-scale surveys. For instance one Young and Rubicam study tracked the new segment of single, professional career women without ambitions of having a family. They are among the highest consuming segments and are characterised by central values such as freedom and independent. Many companies use values inventories in order to adapt their strategies. SAS, the airline which for a long time addressed 'hard value' of their key segment, business travellers, realise that segments  had started to express more informal and 'softer' values, and they changed their communication profile strategy. 

Similarly P&G's best selling wet mop failed spectacularly. This was because both companies underestimated the market's desire for products that are tough cleaners, not time savers.
Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvu8J4UPjNg&feature=related

Group Conformity

Group Conformity 

Conformity refers to the change in beliefs and actions as  reaction to real or imagined group pressure. In order for a society to function, its members develop norms, or informal rules that govern their behaviour. If such a system of agreement and rules did not evolve, choas would result. Imagine the confusion if a simple norm such as sitting down to attend class did not exist?

The reason for conformity is not an automatic process, and many factors contribute to the likelihood that consumers will pattern their behaviours after others. Among the factors that affect the likelihood of conformity are as follows:

Cultural pressures- different cultures encourage conformity to a greater or lesser degree.

Fear of deviance- The individual may have reasons to believe that the group will apply sanctions to punish non-conforming behaviours. 

Commitment- The more people are dedicated to a group of values and their membership in it, the more motivated they are to do what the group wants. 

Group unanimity size- As groups gain in power, compliance increases. It is often harder to resist the demands of a large number of people than just a few, and this difficulty is compounded when the group members are perceived to know what they are thinking.

Susceptibility to interpersonal influence- This trait refers to an individual's need to have others think highly of them. 

Opinion Leadership


If you decide to buy a new stereo, you will most likely seek advice from a friend who knows a lot about sound-systems. This friend may own a sophisticated system, or they may subscribe to specialized magazines such as stereo review and spend free time browsing through electronics stores. On the other hand, you may have a friends who has a reputation of being stylish and who spends their free time reading fashion and life style magazines and shopping at trendy boutiques. While you might not bring up your stereo problem with them, you may take them with you to shop for a new wardrobe.  

Everyone knows people who are knowledgeable about products and whose advice is taken seriously by others. These individauls are opinion leaders. An opinion leader is a person who is frequently able to influence others' attitude or behaviours. Some people's recommendations carry more weight than others.

Peer Pressure 
When you were a little child, your parents usually choose your friends, putting you in playgroups or arranging playdates with certain children they know and liked. Now that you're older, you decide who you want for friends and what groups you spend time with.
Your friends and peers are people of your own age or people close to you who have experiences and interests similar to yours. You and your friends make dozens of decisions every day, and you influence each other's choices and behaviors. This is often positive, it is human nature to listen to and learn from other people your age group.
As you become more independent, your peers naturally play a greater role in your life. As school and other activities take you away from home, you may spend more time with peers than you do with your parents and siblings. You'll probably develop close friendships with some of your peers, and you may feel so connected to them that they are like an extended family.

Perception Theory

In order to receive information from the environment we are equipped with sense organs example eye, ear, and nose. Each sense organ is part of a sensory system which receives sensory inputs and transmits sensory information to the brain.

Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by vibrations through the ear. The inability to hear is known as deafness. Hearing involves the computationally complex task of separating the sources of interest (Moore 2009). Sound does not usually come from a single source, it may come from multiple sources and directions are superimposed as they arrive at the ears.

Taste is another of the five senses. It is the ability to detect flavour of substances including but not limited to food. The sensation can be categorised into five tastes: sweetness, bitterness, sourness, saltiness and umami. Humans receive tastes through sensory organs called taste buds (Daniel 2005).

Olfaction is the sense of smell and this sense is mediated by sensory cells of the nasal cavity. The inability to smell is known as anosmia.

Touch is a perception resulting from activation of the skin including hair follicles and also the tongue, throat and mucosa. The loss of impairment of the ability to feel is called tactile anaesthesia while paresthesia is a sensation of tingling, prinking or numbness of the skin.

Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of light reaching the eyes, the result of this is known as eyesight or vision. The loss of vision is known as blindness. There are two schools of thought about how vision is carried into the body. The first "emission theory" postulates that vision occurs when rays emanate from the eyes and are intercepted by visual objects. The second school advocates the "intro-mission" approach which sees vision as coming from something entering the eyes which represent an object (Finger 1994).

Gestalt theory of visual perception:-
 

Gestalt means when parts identified individually have different characteristics to the whole (Gestalt means "organised whole") for example describing a tree, its parts are trunk, branches, leaves, perhaps blossoms or fruit. But when you look at an entire tree, you are not conscious of the parts, you are aware of the overall object, the tree. Parts are of secondary importance even though they can be clearly seen. There are six principles associated with the Gestalt theory which are: - proximity, similarity, common fate, good continuation, closure and finally area and symmetry.

A major theoretical issue on which psychologists are divided is the extent to which perception relies directly on the information present in the stimulus. Some argue that perceptual processes are not direct, but depend on the perceiver's expectations and previous knowledge as well as the information available in the stimulus itself.

This controversy is discussed by 2 theorists:-

Gregory (1970) who argues that perception is a constructive process which relies on top-down processing and Gibson (1966). He argued against the idea that perception involves top-down processing. Gibson criticises Gregory's suggestion of visual illusions as artificial examples and not images found in the normal environments. Instead Gibson argues that perception is direct and not subject to hypothesis testing as suggested by Gregory. He further postulates that there is enough information in our environment to make sense of the world in a direct way, "sensation is perception: what you see is what is what you get".


Further reading:
http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~kbroom/Lectures/gestalt.htm

http://www.lumosity.com/landing_pages/42
http://www.simplypsychology.org/perception-theories.html