The importance of customer perception on brands
Do you prefer to purchase products from that you are familiar with and trust, or from brands that you have never heard of?
The answer should be obvious, right?
This shows that how you perceive a brand will directly impact your decision to purchase any product and service.
That would be the same with other customers. However, they do not solely perceive your product based on the marketing that has been done; they will also form their own opinions based on a variety of different factors.
This is generally known as customer perception.
But what are the factors that will influence customer perception?
Let's explore!
Factors influencing customer perception
The first factor would be price.
In the world of opinions, consumers use price to gauge the quality and status of the product.
When you set your prices, you need to consider whether you are sending the right quality and status message to your intended customer persona.
On one hand, customers prefer a good deal and are more inclined to choose a lower-cost product.
On the other hand, customers also perceive low-cost products as cheap and disposable, resulting in a negative impression of the products.
If you priced your product incorrectly, you will run into perception problems where your customer perceives it to be disposable or of low value.
The next factor would be reputation. These days, reputation can exist in multiple forms such as experience from using the product, word-of-mouth recommendations, and marketing campaigns.
As the popularity of online shopping increases, online reviews written by customers are also a form of reputation.
A review by Qualtrics shows that 93% of customers read online reviews before purchasing, which means that reviews will greatly impact product purchase decisions.
In addition to that, customer perception of a good or service is heavily influenced by its actual quality. Marketing can sway away customer perception of quality but your product will eventually speak for itself.
How to improve customer perception
While many of the factors mentioned above may seem to be beyond your control, the truth is that customer perceptions are mainly influenced by the way you treat your customer and how your business is operated.
In some way or another, most businesses collect consumer feedback. Another study by Brightlocal shows that 96% of consumers read businesses’ responses after they left their reviews, which shows that taking the effort to listen to and respond to consumer feedback goes a long way towards making consumers feel that you care about them.
Other than that, it is vital to understand targeted audiences and prioritize them. It is impossible to please everyone all of the time. Rather, figure out who you are attempting to reach, as well as what they desire – then satiate that desire.
A good example would be Utah’s Snowbird ski resort. They managed to turn one-star reviews into effective advertisements by prioritizing audiences that are up for the challenge.
Pseudoscience, misrepresentation and how it can hurt bottom lines
However, some businesses tend to spread misinformation to shift customer perception to their side. The common misconceptions that are widely spread are about organic products and sodium laureth sulfate (SLS) free personal care products such as body washes or shampoos.
Non-organic products are often being touted as less healthy or even harmful, and there is a perception that products containing SLS cause cancer.
Misrepresentation using pseudoscience is a type of business marketing technique, such as in the promotion of organic or SLS-free products so that customers perceive them as better options.
Studies show that organic products have the same nutritional values compared to non-organic products, whereas SLS body washes do not lead to cancer.
By instilling and promoting such messages, those products are then usually sold at a much higher price to maximize profit and hence justify the perception that their products are “superior” to other mainstream products.
It is true that you can gain customers by spreading misinformation that benefits your bottom lines. However, for the consumers that see through your lies, it will leave a bad taste in their mouths.
According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, 48% of people in the Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa had lost faith in businesses.
As an entrepreneur, you are responsible for improving customer perception, be it to increase sales for your businesses or to improve the lives of your customers.
It does not have to be through misrepresentation.
Putting in effort to prioritize your customers by giving them excellent service and high-quality products instead of misleading them, you will be able to positively affect their perceptions — and hence their reality.
Written by: Tuck
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