Edited by Martin Cadwell, Friday, 14 Feb 2025, 01:46
13 minute read
Asians
paint the background: the whole scene; and Europeans paint the main
characters in the foreground first. It is the concept that is
important to Asians and the incidence that is important to
Westerners.
Asians
paint an holistic view of life, such as the background effects the
foreground. Western perspectives have the central figures (people) as
being the forefront, or front, in their representation of a picture
or scenario.
On
Culture
Of
course, marketers cannot control customers’ cultural, social,
personal, and psychological characteristics, yet these
characteristics are of huge interest.
If
there is an hierarchy of customer characteristics then culture would
be firmly at the top; it has the broadest and deepest influences on
customers, and is the most basic course of a person’s wants and
behaviours.
According
to Bogachevsky, a friend to Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an Armenian
mystic, one should not allow oneself to adopt any conventions, either
those of one’s immediate circle or of those of any other people, he
said. ‘From the conventions with which one is stuffed, subjective
morality is formed, but for real life, objective morality is needed,
which comes only from conscience’.
Culture,
as a state of consciousness or predilection to perceive in a
particular way, (see the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) comes from observed
and learned values that pertain to achievement and success; activity
and involvement; efficiency and practicality; progress; material
comfort; individualism; freedom; humanitarianism; youthfulness; and
fitness and health. These, however, are not universally found,
particularly so in large cities.
It
is true that different cultural distinctions are found across the
world, yet many cultures also exist in any Western city.
Availability
Heuristic
Enculturation
(noun)
The
process by which an individual adopts the behaviour patterns of the
cultures in which he or she is immersed.
The
adoption of the behaviour patterns of the surrounding cultures
Acculturation
(noun)
The
modification of the culture of a group or individual as a result of
contact with a different culture.
The
process by which the culture of a particular society is instilled in
a human from infancy onward
The
process of adopting and assimilating foreign cultural elements.
*Enculturation
is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems
from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing
culture of the society.
*Acculturation
is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a
new cultural environment as a result of being placed into a new
culture, or when another culture is brought to you.
Chanel
- perfumier. Chanel produce a wide variety of liquids intended to
convince the wearer of which, that they are sexier with the odour
being associated with their presence than on
other occasions otherwise. While
many members of the opposite sex find these perfumes pleasant it is
an entirely subjective experience, mostly experienced by the wearer.
Originally, perfume was used to mask the horrendous
smells of the unwashed, the pungent smell of human sewage and horse
waste in the streets (or human excrement in the corners of the rooms
at the Palace of Versailles), and putrid death, most noticeably
during Europe's Black Death in both the 14th century and 1665 in
London. This was done in the form of posies, later potpourri in
little linen bags held to the nose, and for morticians, masks that
held posies. Chanel, however, was among the first to convince rich
females that malodorous and
toxic by-products of bacteria acting on emanations
from the body should be masked by mellifluous scents. Accidentally,
important pheromones were also masked and so there is a trade-off
between masking the slightly nauseating smell of sebum secreted by
someone with an
unhealthy
diet, and denying a would-be lover a wonderful whiff of
heightened-hormone pheromones that actually do not register as having
a smell. 2
Chanel produce
perfumes that have very high prices.
Cultural
differences are also observed by graphic designers; a colour may mean
happiness in one country and death in another.
What
is 'noise' in a communication process?
Anything
that distorts a message is considered to be 'noise'. In many cases
'noise' is completely internal in the form of mental disturbance and
capacity. The human brain limits itself in the way it performs
methods of perception. Psychologists will often say that most people
can only remember a list of up to seven items without applying memory
techniques developed by experts. in this case then, the eighth item
will interfere with the list of seven. Moreover, the human brain, it
seems, is inclined to remember only the FIRST or LAST seven items
from a list, though research also shows that there is a permanence of
memory for the first item in the list.
Useful
knowledge in this field is understanding how to eliminate noise in
communication. An approach to this is understanding the best approach
to getting a message across to the target audience. An example is
signage on vehicles; the vehicle should display the business name at
the front, the side, and the rear, so three times - four is
superfluous, and will constitute noise because it will interfere with
the reception of more information due to wasted time taken to read
it. Other information to be displayed is the type of business, which
actually is a heading for information and not part of a list, the
contact information, and the location of operation. The contact
information is typically a telephone number, an email address and
various social media platforms on which the business can be found
(three distinct items on the list). Because telephone numbers in
England are eleven digits these need to be either highly memorable or
divided into chunks. 3
Most people don't realise that mobile phones have different prefacing
digits for the country code; (07) for English mobile numbers. These
two digits are actually noise as they do not need to be retained when
they pertain to a British based mobile phone. So, the remaining nine
digits need to be separated into three groups. If these three groups
have identical digits in the same order, such as 164 164 164, they
constitute only one item on the list. If the spaces are removed
164164164 they can be read as 1641 6416 4 or 1 6416 4164. So, here we
have noise by interference in the perception process with no
extraneous information being available. In both of the latter
displays there is a list of what initially can be considered to be
nine digits and because we know that there are ten available
numerical digits in a telephone number we must allocate x amount of
our perception to record nine different digits from an available list
of ten, despite these numerical digits being separated into three
groups, albeit awkwardly. The reason this is noise is because of the
similarity of the digits in the three groups - yet there are only
three different numbers.
Graphic
designers are careful to make sure that the message to be conveyed is
not obscured by a background colour such as pink on an orange
background. However, the message to be conveyed can be interfered
with by using the wrong font or colour - this would be noise.
Noise
can be inadvertently added to marketing and advertising. Some years
ago there was a newspaper advert for Captain Morgan's Dark Rum. The
printed advert had a young man wearing a straw Panama hat lounging on
a wooden boat on a white sand (tropical) beach. I bought a wooden
sailing boat and a Panama hat, but not the rum. The tropical beach
caused me to think that being a boat-owner would give me pleasure and
I would need a hat to protect me from anticipated exposure to sun and
the rum made me think that my time on a boat would be leisurely even
without alcohol. Alcohol, water and boats do not make a good
combination in my mind.
Ultimately,
noise is manifested in the individual's mind and is more commonly
thought of as
mental aberration, and an inability to adequately process
information. However, we, as humans, can learn, or adapt to, our
surroundings exceptionally well. When MTV, the music video channel
first started broadcasting with the target market being teens, many
older people struggled to read the scrolling text at the bottom of
the screen and,
at
the same time, correctly
perceive any spoken word that was simultaneously being broadcast.
Another
example is when people, decades ago, would reel off their email
address or a web address and expect the recipient to not only
accurately perceive the information but also be able to retain it.
Many people were just not used to perceiving such a combination of
letters and punctuation marks in spoken form. Most surprisingly,
despite training, cold-callers will still reel off their individual
name and the company they are calling from and immediately launch
into their elevator pitch. Which part of the message do they want the
recipient to focus on? The individual, the business, or the offer?
And doesn't it seem obvious that when we leave telephone messages
that we give our own telephone number slowly both at the beginning of
our message and at the end, with a comment at the beginning of the
message that notifies the recipient that the telephone number will be
repeated at the end of the message? Surely then, the recipient only
needs to listen to the message two times at the most. Isn't the most
important part of the message the telephone number? At least then we
can seek further information.
1
Obviously, the exchange of
one service for another is a Quid Pro Quo agreement and has special
considerations because services are intangible and ownership cannot
pass from one entity to another.
2 Morris
Dancing, a traditional folk dance from the Medieval period in
England and enacted in modern English streets and fields,
incorporates men waving handkerchiefs in the air. At a formal
medieval dance handkerchiefs would be held within a
man's armpit until a desirable dance partner
was dancing suitably close. Then, the handkerchief would be
flourished and the man's pheromones would be released into the air
in the vicinity of the 'lovely' lady's, 'unsuspecting'
and 'delicate' nose.
3 In
his 1956 paper entitled 'Seven Plus or Minus Two', George Miller, an
American psychologist, said that our conscious minds can only handle
seven plus-or-minus two bits of information at any one time, and
that we delete the rest. That means on a good day we can deal with
nine bits in total and on a bad day, maybe only five.
Noise in the communication process
Asians paint the background: the whole scene; and Europeans paint the main characters in the foreground first. It is the concept that is important to Asians and the incidence that is important to Westerners.
Asians paint an holistic view of life, such as the background effects the foreground. Western perspectives have the central figures (people) as being the forefront, or front, in their representation of a picture or scenario.
On Culture
Of course, marketers cannot control customers’ cultural, social, personal, and psychological characteristics, yet these characteristics are of huge interest.
If there is an hierarchy of customer characteristics then culture would be firmly at the top; it has the broadest and deepest influences on customers, and is the most basic course of a person’s wants and behaviours.
According to Bogachevsky, a friend to Georg Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, an Armenian mystic, one should not allow oneself to adopt any conventions, either those of one’s immediate circle or of those of any other people, he said. ‘From the conventions with which one is stuffed, subjective morality is formed, but for real life, objective morality is needed, which comes only from conscience’.
Culture, as a state of consciousness or predilection to perceive in a particular way, (see the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) comes from observed and learned values that pertain to achievement and success; activity and involvement; efficiency and practicality; progress; material comfort; individualism; freedom; humanitarianism; youthfulness; and fitness and health. These, however, are not universally found, particularly so in large cities.
It is true that different cultural distinctions are found across the world, yet many cultures also exist in any Western city.
Availability Heuristic
Enculturation (noun)
The process by which an individual adopts the behaviour patterns of the cultures in which he or she is immersed.
The adoption of the behaviour patterns of the surrounding cultures
Acculturation (noun)
The modification of the culture of a group or individual as a result of contact with a different culture.
The process by which the culture of a particular society is instilled in a human from infancy onward
The process of adopting and assimilating foreign cultural elements.
*Enculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that stems from the balancing of two cultures while adapting to the prevailing culture of the society.
*Acculturation is a process in which an individual adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new cultural environment as a result of being placed into a new culture, or when another culture is brought to you.
Chanel - perfumier. Chanel produce a wide variety of liquids intended to convince the wearer of which, that they are sexier with the odour being associated with their presence than on other occasions otherwise. While many members of the opposite sex find these perfumes pleasant it is an entirely subjective experience, mostly experienced by the wearer. Originally, perfume was used to mask the horrendous smells of the unwashed, the pungent smell of human sewage and horse waste in the streets (or human excrement in the corners of the rooms at the Palace of Versailles), and putrid death, most noticeably during Europe's Black Death in both the 14th century and 1665 in London. This was done in the form of posies, later potpourri in little linen bags held to the nose, and for morticians, masks that held posies. Chanel, however, was among the first to convince rich females that malodorous and toxic by-products of bacteria acting on emanations from the body should be masked by mellifluous scents. Accidentally, important pheromones were also masked and so there is a trade-off between masking the slightly nauseating smell of sebum secreted by someone with an unhealthy diet, and denying a would-be lover a wonderful whiff of heightened-hormone pheromones that actually do not register as having a smell. 2 Chanel produce perfumes that have very high prices.
Cultural differences are also observed by graphic designers; a colour may mean happiness in one country and death in another.
What is 'noise' in a communication process?
Anything that distorts a message is considered to be 'noise'. In many cases 'noise' is completely internal in the form of mental disturbance and capacity. The human brain limits itself in the way it performs methods of perception. Psychologists will often say that most people can only remember a list of up to seven items without applying memory techniques developed by experts. in this case then, the eighth item will interfere with the list of seven. Moreover, the human brain, it seems, is inclined to remember only the FIRST or LAST seven items from a list, though research also shows that there is a permanence of memory for the first item in the list.
Useful knowledge in this field is understanding how to eliminate noise in communication. An approach to this is understanding the best approach to getting a message across to the target audience. An example is signage on vehicles; the vehicle should display the business name at the front, the side, and the rear, so three times - four is superfluous, and will constitute noise because it will interfere with the reception of more information due to wasted time taken to read it. Other information to be displayed is the type of business, which actually is a heading for information and not part of a list, the contact information, and the location of operation. The contact information is typically a telephone number, an email address and various social media platforms on which the business can be found (three distinct items on the list). Because telephone numbers in England are eleven digits these need to be either highly memorable or divided into chunks. 3 Most people don't realise that mobile phones have different prefacing digits for the country code; (07) for English mobile numbers. These two digits are actually noise as they do not need to be retained when they pertain to a British based mobile phone. So, the remaining nine digits need to be separated into three groups. If these three groups have identical digits in the same order, such as 164 164 164, they constitute only one item on the list. If the spaces are removed 164164164 they can be read as 1641 6416 4 or 1 6416 4164. So, here we have noise by interference in the perception process with no extraneous information being available. In both of the latter displays there is a list of what initially can be considered to be nine digits and because we know that there are ten available numerical digits in a telephone number we must allocate x amount of our perception to record nine different digits from an available list of ten, despite these numerical digits being separated into three groups, albeit awkwardly. The reason this is noise is because of the similarity of the digits in the three groups - yet there are only three different numbers.
Graphic designers are careful to make sure that the message to be conveyed is not obscured by a background colour such as pink on an orange background. However, the message to be conveyed can be interfered with by using the wrong font or colour - this would be noise.
Noise can be inadvertently added to marketing and advertising. Some years ago there was a newspaper advert for Captain Morgan's Dark Rum. The printed advert had a young man wearing a straw Panama hat lounging on a wooden boat on a white sand (tropical) beach. I bought a wooden sailing boat and a Panama hat, but not the rum. The tropical beach caused me to think that being a boat-owner would give me pleasure and I would need a hat to protect me from anticipated exposure to sun and the rum made me think that my time on a boat would be leisurely even without alcohol. Alcohol, water and boats do not make a good combination in my mind.
Ultimately, noise is manifested in the individual's mind and is more commonly thought of as mental aberration, and an inability to adequately process information. However, we, as humans, can learn, or adapt to, our surroundings exceptionally well. When MTV, the music video channel first started broadcasting with the target market being teens, many older people struggled to read the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen and, at the same time, correctly perceive any spoken word that was simultaneously being broadcast.
Another example is when people, decades ago, would reel off their email address or a web address and expect the recipient to not only accurately perceive the information but also be able to retain it. Many people were just not used to perceiving such a combination of letters and punctuation marks in spoken form. Most surprisingly, despite training, cold-callers will still reel off their individual name and the company they are calling from and immediately launch into their elevator pitch. Which part of the message do they want the recipient to focus on? The individual, the business, or the offer? And doesn't it seem obvious that when we leave telephone messages that we give our own telephone number slowly both at the beginning of our message and at the end, with a comment at the beginning of the message that notifies the recipient that the telephone number will be repeated at the end of the message? Surely then, the recipient only needs to listen to the message two times at the most. Isn't the most important part of the message the telephone number? At least then we can seek further information.
1 Obviously, the exchange of one service for another is a Quid Pro Quo agreement and has special considerations because services are intangible and ownership cannot pass from one entity to another.
2 Morris Dancing, a traditional folk dance from the Medieval period in England and enacted in modern English streets and fields, incorporates men waving handkerchiefs in the air. At a formal medieval dance handkerchiefs would be held within a man's armpit until a desirable dance partner was dancing suitably close. Then, the handkerchief would be flourished and the man's pheromones would be released into the air in the vicinity of the 'lovely' lady's, 'unsuspecting' and 'delicate' nose.
3 In his 1956 paper entitled 'Seven Plus or Minus Two', George Miller, an American psychologist, said that our conscious minds can only handle seven plus-or-minus two bits of information at any one time, and that we delete the rest. That means on a good day we can deal with nine bits in total and on a bad day, maybe only five.