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Home » Management articles » Perception Management: Definition and Critical Tips

Perception Management: Definition and Critical Tips

September 21, 2020 By Hitesh Bhasin Tagged With: Management articles

Do you want to add multiplier useful to all your marketing activities? Then perception management can do the magic for you. It differentiates great businesses from only good businesses.

Successful and reputed brands are the ones that grasp advertising and marketing at each level of the organizational hierarchy and are driven by a top-level managerial team that values entirely the intensity of making and managing ethical perceptions.

Perception Management

Perception management is also understood as a Propaganda Technique that cautiously reshapes/revamps/reconstructs the perception of the target market/niche/audiences to fulfil the desired motive or get favorable outcomes.

That is why; it is considered a fundamental part of present-day Information Warfare.

The term ‘Perception Management’ was started inside the US Military as a significant aspect of their Psyops Program. In this, selective information is given (or denied) to the target group/community/society/audience to impact their feelings, thought processes and behavioural reasoning, to channelize a change in their conduct best-suited to the sponsors.

As per some of the industry experts, such use of perception management is based upon Disinformation and Deception. US Branch of Defense says- “Perception Management combines truth projection, operations security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.”

However, in today’s time, perception management has also become an integral part of Business Management Procedures, and there, it is more inclined towards persuasion instead of deception and manipulations.  

In this post, we will dive deep into the ways contemporary businesses use perception management, and how important it is for them. So, let us get underway-

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
  • What is Brand Perception Management?
  • Critical Tips for effective Perception Management by Businesses
  • Is perception management important for a successful career?
  • Know how you are perceived for Effective Perception Management!
  • List of Do’s and Don’ts in Perception Management
    • Related posts:

Introduction

According to the Department of Defense (DOD), the US, ‘perception management’ refers to the actions taken to convey or deny information and resort to ways to influence foreign people’s emotions and motives.

It also works majorly in changing the intelligent system and the world leaders so that they behave in a way, more or less deemed favourable to the originator.

‘Perception’ refers to the process of acquisition, organization, and interpretation of the ‘senses’ and ‘feelings’ of and by human beings to give meaning to the world.

Perception management is a learned skill to ensure that the message that you want to communicate reaches the individual(s) and is understood by them the same way you want them to. It means what people interpret when they hear anything about or of you from other people, or what we think of people, situations, or anything based on how they affect our stimuli or what we feel for and about that particular entity.

Also Read  Information Processing - Definition, Tools and Stages

When it comes to creating the right perceptions for optimizing the presence, reach, connections, and conversions of a brand, perception management plays a critical role. Let us understand this more lucidly-

What is Brand Perception Management?

What is Brand Perception Management

Managing perceptions of a brand is making aware of the things that drive the brand owners. It should also be used in managing the purpose and mission of the brand. All in all, it is related to creating favourable perceptions for the brand in the target-niche to get welcoming outcomes.

Using perception management skills is vital for establishing how others perceive you. It is used primarily for managing the reputation throughout the organization, audiences, stakeholders, and the masses.

In the words of Abraham Lincoln-

“Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

Perception management empowers a brand or leader to get favourable public sentiments.

Government agencies and corporate businesses have adopted perception management as one of their essential goals, objectives, and ways to reach out to people. Perception management is an artistic and scientific way where you make use of creative ways to influence people. You must ensure the buyers perceive your brand.

Critical Tips for effective Perception Management by Businesses

1. Building Reality

You solely decide what people should perceive as ‘real’ and what they should not. In other words, you build a new ‘real’ away from reality.

Do you know that some well-known multinational companies hire paid reviewers to review their products? Well, what brilliant perception management. They know that more than 70% of the buyers rely on reviews.

Fast food brands always make use of artificial resources to make their products look more attractive. Have you ever had a packet of chips that looks full, but when you open it, you find out that the quantity is much less than what it seems or what you expected? Well.

2. Please do not create a reality which is too far from the actual truth

Well, imagine selling a packet of chips that looks full, but when opened, it has nothing in it. You will probably lose more than 50% of the customers.

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When people find out that the packet contains a handful of chips, they will complain, but once they taste good, they will return to buy more. However, if they do not find the chips, there is no prospect of eating these!

Hence, plan your perception management carefully. Do not go to the end of fooling people.

3. The first impression is the last

If you are opening your start-up or starting your business, it is better to focus on what is real.

Once you convince your target audience about quality and quantity, you can implement perception management strategies to gain more buyers and invest less.

Is perception management important for a successful career?

Yes, it is. You are the one who decides your destiny.

The pace at which the world has been changing requires you to be the best of the best. Almost all the companies focus less on the educational qualifications of the employees and more on how much they contribute or how fast they complete an assignment.

So, while being interviewed, convince your employers about your abilities instead of presenting documents that have the numerous certificates that you have earned from your schools and colleges. Manipulate your employers with effective perception management strategies.

You also need to maintain a cordial relation with your colleagues. Let us be honest enough to accept that the world thrives on validation and not on quality work unless you have reached that position where no one can rule over you.

Know how you are perceived for Effective Perception Management!

  • Spend some alone time to know more about yourself and what you want.
  • Ask for informal feedback from your colleagues and employers to have a rough idea about what people think of you. Look at your image through their eyes.

It can often be related to Charles Horton Cooley’s ‘Looking Glass Self’ that says-

“I am not what I think I am, I am not what you think I am, I am what I think you think I am.”

Simply put, my identity is not based on what I perceive myself to be or what you understand me to be but on my perceptions of what you see me be. I create an identity based on your actions and how I react to those.

  • You can take the help of Psychometrics.
  • Communicate your motives and intentions to your colleagues. Observe how they react to your ideas.
  • It would help if you evaluated how you have progressed so far. Maintaining daily journals where you note down the feedbacks and improvements can help.
  • It would help if you were not impatient every time there is a negative review.
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List of Do’s and Don’ts in Perception Management

Do

  • Spend quality alone time for self-evaluation.
  • Know how you are affected by stress and how others perceive you to be affected by stress.
  • Learn to interpret both verbal and non-verbal symbols of communication. Observe their movements, how fast or how slow they speak, and how energetic they are.
  • Know how you affect others.
  • Ask for feedback from your colleagues.
  • Learn to exercise charismatic authority. Inspire and influence people. Frame a good conversation in your head and use positive quotes so that people are awed. Politicians and political parties often express charismatic authority. Religious figures express charismatic authority. Be the one that people look up to and approach for help.

Do not

  • Expect much more than you give.
  • Emotionally react to feedbacks.
  • Act defensive.
  • Be aggressive.
  • Pester and irritate people for feedbacks.

Final Thoughts!

Perception Management is the practice that you adopt to create your impression or the way you decide how other people should interpret your behaviour and how they are impacted by it.

It is also the practice of reading, observing, and carefully interpreting other people’s actions. Once you have mastered the art of perception management, success will be there at your doorstep.

Using perception management constructively will help you get the respect of your friends, bosses, employees, peers, or even the masses or your target audiences. You can use it to improve the way you are perceived by others to build a reliable brand around you.

Do you think today’s businesses can survive without using perception management strategies?

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Barriers to EntryBarriers To Entry: Meaning, Types, Examples Business Risk: Definition, Types, Importance and How to Minimize it Employee Background Check: Concept, Importance, Steps & Advantages 10 Ways To Be SuccessfulHow to be Successful? 10 Ways To Be Successful Middle ManagementMiddle Management: Role, Importance, Examples, and Skills Performance Appraisal MethodsTop 18 Performance Appraisal Methods for Best Results Definition of Entrepreneur - EntrepreneurshipDefinition Of Entrepreneur – Define Entrepreneurship 10 Ways To Be ConfidentHow to be Confident? 10 Ways To Be Confident Perception Perception is a Latin word that can be defined as the ability of a person to see, hear, feel, regard, and understand through sensory means. Every human being has a different perception because each human being sense and follows a situation in a different way. A person can be happy in a specific condition whereas at the same time another person can be unhappy in the same condition. The way each human being perceives anything is defined through his perception. Therefore, if you want to understand the behaviour of a person or why he behaves in a certain way, then it is essential to understand the concept of perception. This will not only help you know other people better but will also help you in creating healthy relationships with them. Keep reading this article to learn about perception and perceptual processes. Definition of perception: Perception can be defined as a way or an individual’s ability to interpret something through their senses, or mind, or understanding. The perception of an individual is the product of his or her act of perceiving or looking at things. The perception of each individual is different from one another because of their individual experiences. Meaning of perception: The definition of perception can be the awareness of somebody towards something. It could be one’s feelings, thoughts, or social surroundings. It is a perceptual process through which one experiences the world. For example, different people can have different perceptions for one sound of music, such as one might find rock music as noise, and others can find rock music motivating. Therefore, perception can be stated as our sensory experience of the world that exists around us. It helps us in recognising the environmental stimuli around us and also motivates our response to those stimuli. The perceptual process helps us in understanding the environment that exists around us and also helps us in gaining information about the properties and elements of the situation. The information about the features and aspects of the environment allows humans to survive in the environment around them. The perception of an individual is formed through five senses, such as touch, smell, taste, sight, and feel. The perception of an individual is formed through the mentioned set of senses that are involved in detecting the changes and movement happening in body position. Also, the perception includes a cognitive process that is necessary to process information. For example, a cognitive process takes place when a person reacts to a familiar face or comes across a familiar scent. Perceptual Process: A perceptual process involves a set of steps that evokes with the environment and helps us in generating perception for a stimulus and the required action to be taken in the situation. The perceptual process is a continual process. Therefore, an individual does not spend a lot of time thinking about the process to react to a situation that takes place around him at a given point in time. Take the example of light falling on your retina. The process of transforming the light that falls on your retina into an image happens automatically and unconsciously. You are not required to put effort into getting the output. In this section, you will learn about the steps that are involved in building a perceptual process. Let us learn about them one by one. Steps involved in the perceptual process: Step 1: The environmental event: The world that occurs around us is full of various activities that might attract our attention. An ecological event or stimuli can be referred to anything that happens in our environment and has the potential to be perceived by us. Anything present in the environment that one can perceive through their senses like touch, taste, look, smell, and hear. This can also lead to proprioception where changes in the body take place such as leg and arms with the objects that take place in the environment. For example, when you travel in a train, you come across various environmental stimuli that grab your attention such as the trees on the sides of the rail tracks, clouds in the sky, people standing on the railway station, a person selling water bottles in the train, people sitting by your side and talking to one another, sound of announcements, etc. All of these events are examples of environmental stimuli taking place around you and can serve as an initial point of your perceptual process. Step 2: The attended stimulus in the environment: The attended stimulus is one stimulus taking place around us in the environment. It is referred to as attended stimuli because the attention of the observer is focused on it. Most of the time, people pay attention to the stimulus that they are familiar with. For example, you are more likely to pay attention to the face of your friend out of the massive crowd of people. Otherwise, we are likely to pay attention to an event that is unconventional such as people usually get attracted to the people with a physical deformity. For example, during your train journey, you observe a signboard at a railway station. Right after you see the sign, the visual process in the perceptual process will begin, which is the third step of the perceptual process. Step 3: Image builds on the retina: In this step, the image of the attended stimuli creates on your eyes’ retina. In the process of creating an image on your retina, light first enters the eyes then pass through the cornea, pupil, and finally to the lens of the eye. The light is focused with the help of the cornea after it enters the eye. Both cornea and lens help in building the inverted image of the object onto the retina of the eye. You must have learned that an inverted image of an object is built on the retina of the eye. The image formed on your retina might not be vital because you do not yet perceive it. The visual image created might become more useful in the next step of the perceptual process. Step 4: Transduction: The next stage of the perceptual process is transduction. In the process of transduction, the image built of the retina is converted into electrical signals. These signals are used to send messages to the brain so that it can interpret the meaning of the image. The retina of a human eye consists of several photoreceptor cells. These photoreceptor cells contain two types of protein that are known as rods and cones. The rods in the retina of a human eye perform the function of seeing things in the low light. On the other hand, cones are used to detect the colour and shape of the image at an average light level. Both rods and cones consist of a molecule known as retinal. The role of retinal is transducing the light into visual signals that are further transmitted with the help of nerve impulses. Step 5: Neural Processing: The next phase is neural processing. The electrical signals generated, undergo neural processing. There can be two types of signals, such as auditory signal and visual signal. The path followed by each signal depends on the type and nature of the signal. The electrical signals are communicated from the receptor cells to the brain with the help of many series of connected neurons present throughout the body. For example, in the previous case, the image of the signboard on the railway station is received in the form of light on the retina, which is transduced into an electrical signal and processed with the help of series of neurons in the visual network. Step 6: Perception: The next step of the perceptual process is perception. In this process, the stimulus object in the environment is finally perceived. At this point, our mind consciously becomes aware of the stimulus. In our example, at this stage of the perceptual process, our mind becomes aware of the information written on the signboard of the railway station. However, there is still a difference between becoming aware and becoming fully aware of the stimuli perceived by us. In the next step of the perceptual process, the information perceived by us is further categorised into meaningful categories. Step 7: Recognition: The process of perception does not only end with our mind consciously becoming aware of the stimuli, but our brain also needs to understand the meaning of what we are seeing and to interpret it. Our ability to understand and interpret the purpose of the object that we see and sense is called recognition. From our example, now you can not only see but also understand the meaning of the written text on the signboard. The recognition step is essential in the perceptual process because, through recognition, we make sense of the world that exists around us. By making sense of the objects and interpreting their meaning, we can react correctly to the world living around us. Step 8: Action: The last and the final step of the perceptual process is the action taken by an individual in response to the environmental stimulus. There can be different types of activities in response to the one stimuli. For example, you might act with your head-turning in a particular direction or action by involving your hands. The action stage of the perceptual process involves some motor activity that takes place in response to the perceived stimuli. In our example, you might act according to what information is written on the board. For example, if you read a sign written, “take a left,” then you will respond by turning your face in the left direction and walking in that direction.Perception: Meaning, and Process of Perception Self AssessmentSelf Appraisal – 10 Key Steps To Write Performs Review And Explained With Examples
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About Hitesh Bhasin

I love writing about the latest in marketing & advertising. I am a serial entrepreneur & I created Marketing91 because i wanted my readers to stay ahead in this hectic business world. You can follow me on Facebook. Let's stay in touch :)

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