Week 1 Introduction
Literature CORE Paper
Krishna, A. (2012), An integrative review of sensory marketing
An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to
affectperception, judgment and behavior.
Sensory marketing: marketing that engages the
consumers' senses and affects their perception,
judgment and behavior an un-derstanding of
sensation and perception as it applies to consumer
behavior.
Sensory marketing can be used to create
subconscious triggers that characterize consumer
perceptions of abstract notions of the product (e.g., its sophistication, quality, elegance,
innovativeness, modernity, interactivity) = the brands’ personality
- Conscious triggers that appeal to consumers' basic senses may be a more effective
way to engage them given the variety of explicit marketing pitches presented to them
every day.
- Rather than explicitly receiving these brand traits from the marketer, these sensory
triggers may cause consumers to self-generate these desirable brand attributes.
What exactly is sensory marketing?
Bottleslike those for Orangina have adopted shapes and textures that resemble the raw
material of the product itself, in this case the orange, to stand out from other products,
and also to appeal to consumers' haptic sense.
It seems that unconscious triggers, like those appealing to the basic senses, may be a
more efficient way to ap-peal to consumers. Also, these sensory triggers (deductive
engagement) may result in consumers' self-generation of (desirable) brand attributes,
rather than those verbally provided (deliberate statement) by the advertiser.
Sensory marketing is an application of the under-standing of sensation and perception to
the field of marketing—to consumer perception, cognition, emotion, learning, preference,
choice, or evaluation.
Fig. 2 provides a conceptual framework for the field of sensory marketing.
Sensation versus perception
Sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses.
Sensation: when the stimulus impinges upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ—it is
biochemical (and neurological) in nature.
Perception: the awareness or understanding of sensory information. apprehension with
the mind or senses.
1
,An easy way to understand the difference between sensation and perception is by
considering visual illusions Image.
Speech recognition is another Newborn Japanese children can tell the difference
between “l” and “r”, but Japanese adults cannot. Japanese adults have learned (untrained
themselves) not to decipher the difference because it does not matter in their language.
Even though the auditory signal (sensation) may be carrying an “l” and an “r” sound, the
brain will interpret both as “l” (perception)
Visual perception biases: important within the domain of consumer behavior because they
affect judgments of product sizes and of consumption; these judgments in turn can also
affect actual consumption + visual biases can affect judgments of spaces and distance
traveled
Example: “direct distance” bias whereby direct distance between the endpoints of non-
straight lines of equal length affects their perceived length—the one with the shorter direct
distance between endpoints is perceived to be shorter
Five senses
1. Haptics
Our five senses are ordered hierarchically, with “touch” on top, and the other senses
increasing the acuity of the touch sensation touch, smell, taste, audition and then vision
- Touch and the cosmos were connected since sexual stimulation worked through the
sense of touch allowing the human race to continue.
- Touch is also the first sense to develop in the womb and the last sense one loses with
age.
Example research with monkeys: The cloth mom provided comfort through contact, and
the monkeys chose her over the nutrition mom.
Need for touch scale
Need-for-Touch scale (NFT): picks up individual differences in need-for-touch.
Two sub-scales:
- Instrumental: for functionality, i.e., for a specific objective, generally to buy a product
“The only way to make sure a product is worth buying is to actually touch it.”
- Autotelic: captures compulsive touch or the emotional component of touch—touch for
the sake of touch alone “Touching products can be fun.”
Touch and products
Example research: Half of the study participants were given the chance to touch the
product whereas others could only see it through plexiglass and could not touch the
products. They found that the high overall NFT people were more confident and less
frustrated about their product evaluations when they could feel the product; for low NFTs,
touching or not made no difference.
Humans touching humans
Example research: when the waitress physically touches a customer, her tip increases,
even though her service is not judged to be any better // If touched by the requester, a
person is more willing to taste a new snack in the supermarket
Is there a physiological relationship between touch and generosity?
Higher oxytocin levels have also shown to lead to greater generosity towards strangers
and are also present during childbirth contractions and orgasms.
Example research: hold coffee cup while he did something. The coffee was either hot or
cold. The participants were then asked to judge a target person's personality. It was found
2
,that people who had held the hot coffee judged the target person as being “warmer,” that is,
more generous and caring. After holding hot coffee, participants were also more likely to buy
a gift for a friend versus themselves.
These results show that physical warmth generates interpersonal warmth, the neuro-
physiological explanation being that the same part of the brain is activated for physical
warmth as for interpersonal warmth
Products touching products (disgust)
Disgust: revulsion at the prospect of (oral) incorporation of an offensive substance
Disgust related products: trash bags, cat litter, diapers, cigarettes, feminine napkins
Having any of the disgusting items touching normal, non-disgusting items, e.g., placing
tampons next to the potato chips in your shopping cart or on the shelf decreases the appeal
of the potato chips, but having them close to but not touching them does not
Law of contagion: when a source object touches a target object, the source will continue
to influence the target even after it stops touching it
Like the laws of sympathetic magic, with the source magically transferring some of its
properties to the target through touch
Laws of contagion do not only operate between products but also operate between people
and products participants liked a product less and were less likely to purchase it if
another shopper had touched it earlier.
2. Smell (a focus on how perception affects learning)
Smell and memory
Scent-encoded information may last for longer stretches of time versus information encoded
along with other sensory cues.
- Odor recognition studies show that people's ability to recognize scents they have
encountered previously persists over very long time periods, with minimal reductions in
recognition accuracy from seconds to months or years after exposure.
- Memories triggered by scent cues are more emotional than those evoked by the other
types of cues.
- Ambient scent (omgevingsgeur) increased recall and recognition of brands seen.
Congruence of the odor with the item recalled had no effect Memory for (recalled)
verbal statements was better with an incongruent ambient odor vs. a congruent one only
if the odor was present at both encoding and retrieval.
- Product scent increases memory for associated information.
- Scent-enhanced memory is prone to retroactive interference (from information obtained
later), but that some of the information lost is restored using a scent-based retrieval cue.
- Pleasant scents can enhance evaluations of products and stores Ambient scent can
result in emotion-based semantic connections with memories (e.g., roses and babies)
and improve product evaluation more time is spent searching and there is more
variety-seeking with a congruent versus incongruent odor.
3. Audition
Much of marketing communication is auditory in nature:
- Radio and television advertising messages, jingles, and songs
- Ambient music in retail spaces, hotels, restaurants, and airplanes
- Signature sounds from products such as the sound for the Intel Pentium chip that one
hears each time one starts a computer
Sound symbolism: the sound of the word affects the perception of the object it represents,
the language used (first or second language of bilinguals, visual and auditory processing
3
, differences among individuals based on pictorial versus phonetic script, language
associations that a brand name may have, music in ads, and music in the environment
Sound symbolism
When we hear the sound of a word, we attach meaning to it, even perceiving physical
features for the source of the sound—be it animate (human, dog, cat) or inanimate (box,
robot, car, ice cream) a high frequency bark/yelp is associated with a small dog whereas a
deep, low frequency growl with a large, ferocious looking one // Macho men are similarly
expected to have deeper voices and luxury cars smoother shut-ting doors with low
frequency sounds.
Language
There are some generalizable language-related associations in bilingual (tweetalige)
cultures that use English as the second language.
Use of English in ads has come to suggest a social stereotype—a symbol of modernity,
progress, sophistication, and a cosmopolitan identity.
The primary (or first) language is likely to have high levels of “belongingness”
associations which connote a stronger sense of closeness and in-group association.
Music in advertising
Music in advertising has been shown to impact ad persuasion by impacting mood as also
involvement.
The sound of brand names, the music itself can also carry a meaning—both embodied
(e.g., a faster tempo can evoke more positive feelings) and referential (a nursery rhyme
takes us back to childhood)
Ambient music
Ambient sound, such as music heard in hotels, restaurants, re-tail stores, and supermarkets,
can influence consumer mood, actual time spent in a location, perception of time spent, and
actuals pending.
Stereotypically French versus German music affects the choice of wine: shoppers bought
more French (German) wine when French (German) music was played.
Classical music has been shown to enhance pleasure, whereas pop-style music to
increase arousal.
Voice
When a viewer turns on CNN, she hears James Earl Jones say, “This is CNN.” His deep
voice is authoritative and gives the impression that the news broadcast on this channel is
accurate, up-to-date and covers all significant world events.
French accents and husky-voiced females make the cosmetic or perfume they are selling
appear sexier to the consumer.
Fundamental frequency (voice pitch) and vocal speech rate are two important
influencers of listener response to verbal communication and that they can affect personal
perceptions of the speaker.
In general, low-pitched voices are evaluated more favorably than high-pitched voices and)
listeners attribute greater competence and credibility to individuals who speak more quickly.
4. Taste, consumption, and satiety
Five disparate bio-chemical and cellular interactions in our bodies related to taste: sweet,
salty, sour, bitter and umami (= “deliciousness” or “savory”)
Every single taste from milk to chocolate to wine to prosciutto is a combination of all our
five senses:
- Smell (how the food smells)
4
Literature CORE Paper
Krishna, A. (2012), An integrative review of sensory marketing
An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to
affectperception, judgment and behavior.
Sensory marketing: marketing that engages the
consumers' senses and affects their perception,
judgment and behavior an un-derstanding of
sensation and perception as it applies to consumer
behavior.
Sensory marketing can be used to create
subconscious triggers that characterize consumer
perceptions of abstract notions of the product (e.g., its sophistication, quality, elegance,
innovativeness, modernity, interactivity) = the brands’ personality
- Conscious triggers that appeal to consumers' basic senses may be a more effective
way to engage them given the variety of explicit marketing pitches presented to them
every day.
- Rather than explicitly receiving these brand traits from the marketer, these sensory
triggers may cause consumers to self-generate these desirable brand attributes.
What exactly is sensory marketing?
Bottleslike those for Orangina have adopted shapes and textures that resemble the raw
material of the product itself, in this case the orange, to stand out from other products,
and also to appeal to consumers' haptic sense.
It seems that unconscious triggers, like those appealing to the basic senses, may be a
more efficient way to ap-peal to consumers. Also, these sensory triggers (deductive
engagement) may result in consumers' self-generation of (desirable) brand attributes,
rather than those verbally provided (deliberate statement) by the advertiser.
Sensory marketing is an application of the under-standing of sensation and perception to
the field of marketing—to consumer perception, cognition, emotion, learning, preference,
choice, or evaluation.
Fig. 2 provides a conceptual framework for the field of sensory marketing.
Sensation versus perception
Sensation and perception are stages of processing of the senses.
Sensation: when the stimulus impinges upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ—it is
biochemical (and neurological) in nature.
Perception: the awareness or understanding of sensory information. apprehension with
the mind or senses.
1
,An easy way to understand the difference between sensation and perception is by
considering visual illusions Image.
Speech recognition is another Newborn Japanese children can tell the difference
between “l” and “r”, but Japanese adults cannot. Japanese adults have learned (untrained
themselves) not to decipher the difference because it does not matter in their language.
Even though the auditory signal (sensation) may be carrying an “l” and an “r” sound, the
brain will interpret both as “l” (perception)
Visual perception biases: important within the domain of consumer behavior because they
affect judgments of product sizes and of consumption; these judgments in turn can also
affect actual consumption + visual biases can affect judgments of spaces and distance
traveled
Example: “direct distance” bias whereby direct distance between the endpoints of non-
straight lines of equal length affects their perceived length—the one with the shorter direct
distance between endpoints is perceived to be shorter
Five senses
1. Haptics
Our five senses are ordered hierarchically, with “touch” on top, and the other senses
increasing the acuity of the touch sensation touch, smell, taste, audition and then vision
- Touch and the cosmos were connected since sexual stimulation worked through the
sense of touch allowing the human race to continue.
- Touch is also the first sense to develop in the womb and the last sense one loses with
age.
Example research with monkeys: The cloth mom provided comfort through contact, and
the monkeys chose her over the nutrition mom.
Need for touch scale
Need-for-Touch scale (NFT): picks up individual differences in need-for-touch.
Two sub-scales:
- Instrumental: for functionality, i.e., for a specific objective, generally to buy a product
“The only way to make sure a product is worth buying is to actually touch it.”
- Autotelic: captures compulsive touch or the emotional component of touch—touch for
the sake of touch alone “Touching products can be fun.”
Touch and products
Example research: Half of the study participants were given the chance to touch the
product whereas others could only see it through plexiglass and could not touch the
products. They found that the high overall NFT people were more confident and less
frustrated about their product evaluations when they could feel the product; for low NFTs,
touching or not made no difference.
Humans touching humans
Example research: when the waitress physically touches a customer, her tip increases,
even though her service is not judged to be any better // If touched by the requester, a
person is more willing to taste a new snack in the supermarket
Is there a physiological relationship between touch and generosity?
Higher oxytocin levels have also shown to lead to greater generosity towards strangers
and are also present during childbirth contractions and orgasms.
Example research: hold coffee cup while he did something. The coffee was either hot or
cold. The participants were then asked to judge a target person's personality. It was found
2
,that people who had held the hot coffee judged the target person as being “warmer,” that is,
more generous and caring. After holding hot coffee, participants were also more likely to buy
a gift for a friend versus themselves.
These results show that physical warmth generates interpersonal warmth, the neuro-
physiological explanation being that the same part of the brain is activated for physical
warmth as for interpersonal warmth
Products touching products (disgust)
Disgust: revulsion at the prospect of (oral) incorporation of an offensive substance
Disgust related products: trash bags, cat litter, diapers, cigarettes, feminine napkins
Having any of the disgusting items touching normal, non-disgusting items, e.g., placing
tampons next to the potato chips in your shopping cart or on the shelf decreases the appeal
of the potato chips, but having them close to but not touching them does not
Law of contagion: when a source object touches a target object, the source will continue
to influence the target even after it stops touching it
Like the laws of sympathetic magic, with the source magically transferring some of its
properties to the target through touch
Laws of contagion do not only operate between products but also operate between people
and products participants liked a product less and were less likely to purchase it if
another shopper had touched it earlier.
2. Smell (a focus on how perception affects learning)
Smell and memory
Scent-encoded information may last for longer stretches of time versus information encoded
along with other sensory cues.
- Odor recognition studies show that people's ability to recognize scents they have
encountered previously persists over very long time periods, with minimal reductions in
recognition accuracy from seconds to months or years after exposure.
- Memories triggered by scent cues are more emotional than those evoked by the other
types of cues.
- Ambient scent (omgevingsgeur) increased recall and recognition of brands seen.
Congruence of the odor with the item recalled had no effect Memory for (recalled)
verbal statements was better with an incongruent ambient odor vs. a congruent one only
if the odor was present at both encoding and retrieval.
- Product scent increases memory for associated information.
- Scent-enhanced memory is prone to retroactive interference (from information obtained
later), but that some of the information lost is restored using a scent-based retrieval cue.
- Pleasant scents can enhance evaluations of products and stores Ambient scent can
result in emotion-based semantic connections with memories (e.g., roses and babies)
and improve product evaluation more time is spent searching and there is more
variety-seeking with a congruent versus incongruent odor.
3. Audition
Much of marketing communication is auditory in nature:
- Radio and television advertising messages, jingles, and songs
- Ambient music in retail spaces, hotels, restaurants, and airplanes
- Signature sounds from products such as the sound for the Intel Pentium chip that one
hears each time one starts a computer
Sound symbolism: the sound of the word affects the perception of the object it represents,
the language used (first or second language of bilinguals, visual and auditory processing
3
, differences among individuals based on pictorial versus phonetic script, language
associations that a brand name may have, music in ads, and music in the environment
Sound symbolism
When we hear the sound of a word, we attach meaning to it, even perceiving physical
features for the source of the sound—be it animate (human, dog, cat) or inanimate (box,
robot, car, ice cream) a high frequency bark/yelp is associated with a small dog whereas a
deep, low frequency growl with a large, ferocious looking one // Macho men are similarly
expected to have deeper voices and luxury cars smoother shut-ting doors with low
frequency sounds.
Language
There are some generalizable language-related associations in bilingual (tweetalige)
cultures that use English as the second language.
Use of English in ads has come to suggest a social stereotype—a symbol of modernity,
progress, sophistication, and a cosmopolitan identity.
The primary (or first) language is likely to have high levels of “belongingness”
associations which connote a stronger sense of closeness and in-group association.
Music in advertising
Music in advertising has been shown to impact ad persuasion by impacting mood as also
involvement.
The sound of brand names, the music itself can also carry a meaning—both embodied
(e.g., a faster tempo can evoke more positive feelings) and referential (a nursery rhyme
takes us back to childhood)
Ambient music
Ambient sound, such as music heard in hotels, restaurants, re-tail stores, and supermarkets,
can influence consumer mood, actual time spent in a location, perception of time spent, and
actuals pending.
Stereotypically French versus German music affects the choice of wine: shoppers bought
more French (German) wine when French (German) music was played.
Classical music has been shown to enhance pleasure, whereas pop-style music to
increase arousal.
Voice
When a viewer turns on CNN, she hears James Earl Jones say, “This is CNN.” His deep
voice is authoritative and gives the impression that the news broadcast on this channel is
accurate, up-to-date and covers all significant world events.
French accents and husky-voiced females make the cosmetic or perfume they are selling
appear sexier to the consumer.
Fundamental frequency (voice pitch) and vocal speech rate are two important
influencers of listener response to verbal communication and that they can affect personal
perceptions of the speaker.
In general, low-pitched voices are evaluated more favorably than high-pitched voices and)
listeners attribute greater competence and credibility to individuals who speak more quickly.
4. Taste, consumption, and satiety
Five disparate bio-chemical and cellular interactions in our bodies related to taste: sweet,
salty, sour, bitter and umami (= “deliciousness” or “savory”)
Every single taste from milk to chocolate to wine to prosciutto is a combination of all our
five senses:
- Smell (how the food smells)
4
