Let's now move on to the third and most complicated stage of perception and that is interpretation. So this refers to the meanings that we assign to sensory stimuli. Just as people differ in terms of the stimuli that they perceive the meanings we assigned very dramatically as well. A recent study on how children decide what kind of foods they like, really illustrates the importance of perception and the importance in particular of interpretation. In this study, kids ages three to five, who ate McDonald's french fries, served in a McDonald's bag overwhelmingly thought they tasted better than those who ate the same fries out of a plain white bag. Kind of scary.

In fact, this study found that to these kids, even carrots tasted better when they came out of McDonald's bag. So interpretation is extremely important. And we know that there are enormous cultural differences in how we assign meaning to stimuli. A lot of companies tend to overlook this and just assume that the way people in one country interpret a stimulus is going to be the same around the world and, and they run into a lot of problems for this reason. One of the interesting areas where this occurs, is in corporate gift giving, where people feel compelled to to give gifts when they visit other countries or to send gifts to clients at the end of the year, and so on. But something that is very positive in one culture may have an entirely different meaning and another and Here are a few examples in case you're thinking about starting a corporate gift program.

In China, clocks are linked to funerals, so it's not a good idea to give your Chinese client clock. In Latin America, a knife means cutting off a relationship. So, a nice carving knife certainly isn't a great idea to perpetuate that business connection in China and South Korea never give anything in the set of four fours and unlucky numbers. So you'll find that glasses and dishes and so on are never sold as sets of four. In Japan, white flowers mean death. And the same thing for white gift wrap.

So the lesson there i think is obvious. And finally in Mexico, red flowers are considered to be bad luck and yellow flowers are linked with death. So be very careful about the florist that you choose. Certainly when you're giving gifts in Mexico and Japan. The takeaway here is simple but really, really important. Never assume that your customer shares your exact frame of reference.

In the opening lesson, I talked a lot about it. empathy, and about the importance of understanding your customer, rather than projecting your own needs onto that customer. And so we see in the perceptual process that this is extremely important. Let's move on next to talk about the idea of a schema. The meaning that we assign to a stimulus depends on a schema or a set of beliefs to which we assign it. So This, in turn leads us to compare the stimulus to other similar ones we have encountered in the past.

In other words, when we are trying to make some meaning out of a stimulus, we don't do it in a vacuum. One of the first things that our brains try to do is to figure out how this stimulus is similar to other things we've encountered in the past so that our brains can put that stimulus into a category and that means that identifying and evoking the correct schema crucial to many marketing decisions. Because this determines what criteria consumers will use to evaluate the product package or message. Consumers just couldn't buy the idea that they're going to consume a product like Maalox out of the type of can that they might use to put whipped cream on top of ice cream, for example. Here's another red flag caused by an incorrect schema. We have a floor cleaner product that looks to me an awful lot like a bottle of juice.

And you could imagine that this could cause a problem if a consumer quickly grabs that bottle and takes a big swig. Similarly, we have a radiator coolant that looks an awful lot like perhaps a can of beer. The takeaway here Is the old saying, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. What I mean by this is that consumers are going to almost immediately placed your product into a category with which they're already familiar. And they're going to compare your product to the ones that they've already put in that category, not to things that are outside of that category. Once they've decided that you belong in a certain place, it's extremely difficult to make the move and convince them that you In fact, belong in another category.

This wisdom definitely applies to people as well. And that's the reason for this particular saying, when people meet you, they decide within the first few seconds what type of person you are based upon your appearance and particular things you say things you do, the clothes you're wearing, and so on. And once they've done decided that you're a particular kind of person, it's really hard to persuade them otherwise. So again, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression. Make that first one count.