GB534 Unit 4 Perception Study Example

A Year to Remove 0.7 Pounds That Parents Cannot Feel: A Unit 4 Perception Study on Weight and Price

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB534: Consumer Behavior

Unit 4 Perception Study

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The stroller brand, the tests and every figure are composite and illustrative; the principles and sources cited are real.

The Question

Front Range Strollers' compact model weighs 16.9 pounds folded. A redesign has brought a lighter version to 16.2 pounds. The marketing team wants to advertise it as lighter. The question is whether parents will notice, and if not, how much lighter the frame would need to be.

Weber's Law and the Just Noticeable Difference

Psychophysics measures a just noticeable difference by finding the change people detect on a fixed share of trials, commonly three in four when they must pick one of two. Weber's law says that threshold scales with the starting amount: the heavier the object, the larger the change needed to notice it. Gescheider (1997) describes the law as an approximation that holds well across the middle range of many senses, including judgments of lifted weight. Hoyer et al. (2018) note its marketing use: changes below the threshold will go unnoticed, whether the firm wants them noticed, such as an improvement, or not, such as a price increase.

Experiment 1: The Lift Test

Forty parents of young children each lifted pairs of folded frames: the standard 16.9-pound frame and one lightened by 0.4, 0.8, 1.2, 1.6 or 2.0 pounds, in random order with the heavier frame on either side. Frames looked identical, and parents were asked which was lighter.

Correct identification: 0.4 pounds lighter, 52 percent; 0.8 pounds, 61 percent; 1.2 pounds, 74 percent; 1.6 pounds, 84 percent; 2.0 pounds, 90 percent.

With two choices, chance is 50 percent. Plotted, the results form a rising curve that crosses 75 percent at about 1.24 pounds, about 7.3 percent of the frame's weight. The engineers' 0.7-pound reduction falls at about 59 percent, barely better than guessing.

Parents could not feel the change the engineers worked a year to make; to be noticed, the frame would need to lose nearly twice as much.

Experiment 2: The Price Test

A second group of forty shoppers saw the compact at $379 on one card and the same stroller at a higher price on another, in a quick comparison that mimicked glancing at shelf tags, and were asked whether the prices were different. Differences were $10, $20, $30, $40 and $50.

Shoppers who noticed: $10 higher, 45 percent; $20, 58 percent; $30, 71 percent; $40, 83 percent; $50, 92 percent.

The 75 percent threshold falls at about $33, about 8.8 percent of the price. Several shoppers who did not notice a $20 difference said they would have noticed if the price had crossed $399. Monroe (1973) found that buyers judge prices against reference points and thresholds, and the comments suggest that a price ending in 99 near a round hundred acts as such a threshold.

Why the Threshold Matters for a Compact Stroller

Weight is the compact stroller's main selling point. In the motivation interviews in Unit 3, parents who rejected the full-size model did so because it was hard to lift and carry, and the compact exists to answer that worry. A weight reduction that parents cannot feel does nothing for that motive in the store. It may still matter in another way: a lower number on a specification sheet can tip a comparison between two compacts online. The study therefore separates two audiences, parents who lift and parents who read, and finds the reduction useful only to the second.

A Note on Method

Both tests randomized the order and side of the comparison, so that parents could not guess from position. Frames were matched in appearance, and prices were printed in the same type and size. Each participant made five comparisons in the lift test and five in the price test, enough to estimate the curve for the group but not for each person. Repeating the tests with a larger sample would allow the thresholds to be estimated with confidence intervals.

What the Two Tests Mean Together

The weight reduction is below the threshold of perception, so advertising it as a felt improvement would promise something parents cannot experience. Telling parents the number, 16.2 pounds, could still help shoppers comparing specifications online, where the figure is read rather than felt. But in the store, where parents lift strollers, the change will not register.

The price test raises a different question. Because a small increase would go unnoticed by most shoppers, the brand could raise the price modestly without many customers seeing it. That would be legal but risks trust if parents later compare receipts or online prices. The study recommends treating the threshold as information about how shoppers perceive price, not as an invitation to increases they will not notice.

Recommendations

Do not advertise the 0.7-pound reduction as a felt difference. List the new weight in specifications, but do not claim parents will feel it.

Set a weight target above the threshold. A further reduction to about 15.6 pounds, 1.3 pounds below the original, would be noticed by about three in four parents.

Make weight easier to perceive in other ways. Hoyer et al. (2018) note that perceived attributes depend on cues as well as physical measures. A carry handle placed at the folded frame's balance point would make the stroller feel lighter to lift, even without removing weight.

Keep price below the $399 threshold. If costs require an increase, communicate it openly rather than relying on shoppers not noticing.

Limits

The lift test used folded frames lifted with one arm; parents lifting with a child in the other arm, the situation that matters most, may be less sensitive. The price test used a quick comparison, which is harder than examining tags closely. Both tests used forty participants, enough to see the curves' shape but not to fix thresholds precisely, and all were recruited in Denver stores, which may not reflect shoppers elsewhere.

Conclusion

The engineers' work was real but invisible, and the lesson is not that it was wasted but that it was aimed without a measure of what parents can perceive. Future design targets should be set with a lift test before the engineering begins, not after. The study suggests the brand should aim future weight reductions at the threshold parents can feel, find other ways to make the stroller feel lighter, and treat price thresholds as a reason for care rather than an opportunity.

References

Gescheider, G. A. (1997). Psychophysics: The fundamentals (3rd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hoyer, W. D., MacInnis, D. J., & Pieters, R. (2018). Consumer behavior (7th ed.). Cengage.

Monroe, K. B. (1973). Buyers' subjective perceptions of price. Journal of Marketing Research, 10(1), 70-80. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224377301000110