MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
MCB-30806 Sensory Perception
and Consumer Preference
Lecture 1 - Introduction
Sensory marketing
- Marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affect their perception, judgement and
behaviour
- Five senses: haptics (touch), olfaction (smell), audition (sound), gustation (taste), and vision
(sight)
- Effect on: attitude (liking), learning & memory, behaviour
- Effects often subconsciously but with predictable effect?
What do the example experiments tell?
- Scent (as a sensory influence)
o Can have non conscious effect
o On cognition (thinking) and behaviour (doing)
o Through associations with scent, the cleaning concept came into consciousness
(accessible)
- There are man of such effects
o Sensory labels of food
o Signature scents in hotels
o Packaging cues
o Crispy food sounds
How do sensory input affects response
- Direct affective response to the physical/sensory stimulus
o Sensory liking / sensory product quality
- An affective response to the match between the physical / sensory aspects of the stimulus
and the internal representation or schema associated with the stimulus
o (in-) appropriateness and schema affect
- Affective response to the meaning to the stimulus beyond the physical / sensory aspects
o Associations to concepts in knowledge structures (pine & Christmas)
- By affecting the judgmental and decision environment (Isen)
o Sensory can induce affect which affects decision making
What is sensory perception & consumer preference?
- The senses are the window to the outside world
- Senses include: vision, audition gustation, olfaction and somesthesis, sight, sound, taste,
smell and touch/texture
- They bring outside information inside the human system
- Provide the basic inputs from which we make sense of the world
- The sensory information guides perception, preference and behaviour
- Understanding how this works and how this translates back into offering, allows for better
marketing strategy
1
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
The process
- Environmental stimulus
- Attended stimulus
- Stimulus on the receptors
- Transduction
- Processing
- Perception
- Recognition
- Action
Some important notions
- Physico-chemical energy intrinsic to the food
- Transduces into the neurochemical and neuroelectric events
- In the peripheral nervous system
- Via receptor organs for each modality
- To yield basic sense data (quality, magnitude, duration)
- Basic sense data conveyed through central nervous system
- With a lot of cross-modal sensory interactions
- To yield a perception
- To which an hedonic tone can be attached
How different from ‘traditional’ sensory?
- From food technology and experimental psychology, there is huge tradition of product-
related sensory research
- Focusing on implications for product design & optimisation
- This course focuses on implications for consumer behaviour
How is it different from what you know?
- Sensory channels combine and interact
- Not just mind body but also body mind
- Basis of ‘grounded cognition theory’
o Bodily state
Facial expresses affects funniness ratings of cartoons
o Situation action
Vertical head nodding affects agreement with editorials
o Mental simulation
Imagining listening to music activates auditory cortex
Seeing cookies activated primary taste cortices
2
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
Why now more important for marketing?
- Transitions
o From utilitarian choice to experience management
o Beyond product value to consumption value
- Marketing
o Product – selling – marketing – service – relationships
- Pine & Gilmore experience economy
o Commodities – goods – services – experiments
- Satisfaction literatures
o Quality – value – satisfaction – delight
- Marketing paradigms
o From good dominant logic to service dominant logic
Why consumers value (sensory) experience?
- Time-starved/cash rich; want to be entertained; feel entitled
- Basic needs are well satisfied; they have become qualifiers
- They aim at higher order needs in Maslow terms
- They have an intrinsic need for stimulation (OSL)
- They focus increasingly on value inherent in consumption per se, rather than, in combination
with, the consequences of consumption
Optimal stimulation level
- Many theories are drive reduction theories
- These cannot explain the active search for sensory experience (sensory deprivation studies)
- Complexity theories build on the Optimal Level of Arousal (OLA)
- People differ in what is Optimal for them
- There are many ways to adjust the actual level of stimulation in line with the Optimum
3
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
Lecture 2 – Sensory Information Processing I
Sensory systems importance due to: attention; behaviour impact; number of receptors
- Vision retina
o Depth (two eyes)
o Colour/black-white
o Weak/strong light
o Adaptation (light to dark and dark to light)
- Audition cochlea
o Direction hearing (two ears)
o Low/high tones
o Loud/soft sounds
o Adaptation (not allot, but a bit)
- Taste tongue
- Smell olfactory epithelium
o Directional smelling is not possible
o Intensities
o Qualities
o Adaptation after a while you don’t smell it anymore
o Double function
Retronasal
Orthonasal
o Takes place mostly outside awareness
o Very sensitive to deviations (newness)
o Trigger of behaviour (pheromones)
o Olfactory memory: implicit (un)incidental learning
o Individual differences
Genetic variation in set of olfactory receptors
Personal attributes (context effects)
- Balance vestibular system
- Somesthetics pressure, vibration, soft touch, ..
- Kinaestetics muscle tendons, … iets met muscle joints? als je iets gaat kauwen bv
- Pain free nerve endings
- Temperature cold-, heat receptors
o Six different receptors
o Agonists
Mentol = cold
Capasaicin = hot
Flavour
- = smell and taste integrated
- = (retronasal) odour + taste + mouthfeel
- = nose + tongue + (several ‘oral’ touch senses)
4
Marly Verest
MCB-30806 Sensory Perception
and Consumer Preference
Lecture 1 - Introduction
Sensory marketing
- Marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affect their perception, judgement and
behaviour
- Five senses: haptics (touch), olfaction (smell), audition (sound), gustation (taste), and vision
(sight)
- Effect on: attitude (liking), learning & memory, behaviour
- Effects often subconsciously but with predictable effect?
What do the example experiments tell?
- Scent (as a sensory influence)
o Can have non conscious effect
o On cognition (thinking) and behaviour (doing)
o Through associations with scent, the cleaning concept came into consciousness
(accessible)
- There are man of such effects
o Sensory labels of food
o Signature scents in hotels
o Packaging cues
o Crispy food sounds
How do sensory input affects response
- Direct affective response to the physical/sensory stimulus
o Sensory liking / sensory product quality
- An affective response to the match between the physical / sensory aspects of the stimulus
and the internal representation or schema associated with the stimulus
o (in-) appropriateness and schema affect
- Affective response to the meaning to the stimulus beyond the physical / sensory aspects
o Associations to concepts in knowledge structures (pine & Christmas)
- By affecting the judgmental and decision environment (Isen)
o Sensory can induce affect which affects decision making
What is sensory perception & consumer preference?
- The senses are the window to the outside world
- Senses include: vision, audition gustation, olfaction and somesthesis, sight, sound, taste,
smell and touch/texture
- They bring outside information inside the human system
- Provide the basic inputs from which we make sense of the world
- The sensory information guides perception, preference and behaviour
- Understanding how this works and how this translates back into offering, allows for better
marketing strategy
1
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
The process
- Environmental stimulus
- Attended stimulus
- Stimulus on the receptors
- Transduction
- Processing
- Perception
- Recognition
- Action
Some important notions
- Physico-chemical energy intrinsic to the food
- Transduces into the neurochemical and neuroelectric events
- In the peripheral nervous system
- Via receptor organs for each modality
- To yield basic sense data (quality, magnitude, duration)
- Basic sense data conveyed through central nervous system
- With a lot of cross-modal sensory interactions
- To yield a perception
- To which an hedonic tone can be attached
How different from ‘traditional’ sensory?
- From food technology and experimental psychology, there is huge tradition of product-
related sensory research
- Focusing on implications for product design & optimisation
- This course focuses on implications for consumer behaviour
How is it different from what you know?
- Sensory channels combine and interact
- Not just mind body but also body mind
- Basis of ‘grounded cognition theory’
o Bodily state
Facial expresses affects funniness ratings of cartoons
o Situation action
Vertical head nodding affects agreement with editorials
o Mental simulation
Imagining listening to music activates auditory cortex
Seeing cookies activated primary taste cortices
2
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
Why now more important for marketing?
- Transitions
o From utilitarian choice to experience management
o Beyond product value to consumption value
- Marketing
o Product – selling – marketing – service – relationships
- Pine & Gilmore experience economy
o Commodities – goods – services – experiments
- Satisfaction literatures
o Quality – value – satisfaction – delight
- Marketing paradigms
o From good dominant logic to service dominant logic
Why consumers value (sensory) experience?
- Time-starved/cash rich; want to be entertained; feel entitled
- Basic needs are well satisfied; they have become qualifiers
- They aim at higher order needs in Maslow terms
- They have an intrinsic need for stimulation (OSL)
- They focus increasingly on value inherent in consumption per se, rather than, in combination
with, the consequences of consumption
Optimal stimulation level
- Many theories are drive reduction theories
- These cannot explain the active search for sensory experience (sensory deprivation studies)
- Complexity theories build on the Optimal Level of Arousal (OLA)
- People differ in what is Optimal for them
- There are many ways to adjust the actual level of stimulation in line with the Optimum
3
, MCB-30806 Sensory Perception and Consumer Preference
Marly Verest
Lecture 2 – Sensory Information Processing I
Sensory systems importance due to: attention; behaviour impact; number of receptors
- Vision retina
o Depth (two eyes)
o Colour/black-white
o Weak/strong light
o Adaptation (light to dark and dark to light)
- Audition cochlea
o Direction hearing (two ears)
o Low/high tones
o Loud/soft sounds
o Adaptation (not allot, but a bit)
- Taste tongue
- Smell olfactory epithelium
o Directional smelling is not possible
o Intensities
o Qualities
o Adaptation after a while you don’t smell it anymore
o Double function
Retronasal
Orthonasal
o Takes place mostly outside awareness
o Very sensitive to deviations (newness)
o Trigger of behaviour (pheromones)
o Olfactory memory: implicit (un)incidental learning
o Individual differences
Genetic variation in set of olfactory receptors
Personal attributes (context effects)
- Balance vestibular system
- Somesthetics pressure, vibration, soft touch, ..
- Kinaestetics muscle tendons, … iets met muscle joints? als je iets gaat kauwen bv
- Pain free nerve endings
- Temperature cold-, heat receptors
o Six different receptors
o Agonists
Mentol = cold
Capasaicin = hot
Flavour
- = smell and taste integrated
- = (retronasal) odour + taste + mouthfeel
- = nose + tongue + (several ‘oral’ touch senses)
4
