Selective Perception & Consumer Behavior   The understanding of how selective perception and consumer behavior interact is becoming extremely important to the field of advertising and marketing. Consumer behavior is defined as the study of the buying units and the exchange processes involved in acquiring, consuming, and disposing of goods, services, experiences and ideas (Minor and Mowen, 1998). In the eyes of the marketer and advertiser selective perception has mostly a negative impact on their trade. It their job to design product packaging and advertising campaigns that can "attract" the attention of the consumers. It is especially difficult when the consumer mind is numbed by overexposure to advertising and message clutter.   In consumer retail markets there has been great concentration on layout design planning, store set-up, and other physical changes that attempt to boost consumer involvement. The attentions of supermarket shoppers have been described as "auto-drive," "impulse," "considered" and "experimental." As reported, the most prominent is "auto-drive," a condition where the consumer "cruises" the aisles shopping for regularly purchased items that require little or no active attention. The challenge for the package designer is to make the product stand out against the competition, thus attracting the consumer, and change his or her shopping mode. Changes in consumer shopping mode aid in recognition and "allows the brand to be filtered through a selective perception barrier" (WR Pub, 1998). Several ways that brands could differentiate thorough this clutter is through package design and color. "The temptation for all brands within a category to use the same pack shapes, colors and graphics is extremely strong. Category language sends a long-distance signal to consumers in auto-drive. For example, sparkling waters often appear in blue bottles, the shopper simply looks for the base color of the package" (WR Pub, 1998). One of the most dramatic, and underused, ways of creating impact lies in the design of the pack structures. Everyone can recall the shape of Johnson Wax's toilet duck or Heinz's tomato ketchup bottle (WR Pub, 1998). The size, shape, color and design of product packaging can all be used to attract the consumer's interest. These points can also be used in developing a powerful and differentiated brand. Even the most seasoned and cynical consumers, waltzing down the supermarkets in an auto-drive trance, can be stopped dead in their tracks by a powerful brand design which grabs their attention and demands to be bought (WR Pub, 1998).   Another study that measured selective perception and consumer behavior was an "ad traffic and noting study" conducted by Gallup in 1984. Ad noting and ad traffic studies are based on showing subjects copy that they have been exposed too and asking them to make statements and descriptions on what they remember about the particular ads. In this study, subjects were provided selected advertisements and then were asked questions about the ads. The questions asked were specifically about the advertisements in which the respondents reported that they had not looked at and their reasons for not looking. This established that the great majority of the non-noters had in fact looked at the advertisements but had not originally claimed to have looked at them because they had not felt interested in them (PPA, 1998). This study is important because it demonstrates that the subject's initially perceived the ads in order to decide not to study them. During the Q&A session, the subjects had suggested that the reason their "ignoring" the ads was a lack of personal relevance.   Next