No abstract

Sensory marketing is increasingly gaining importance as a promising approach to effectively appeal to consumers. To predict and monitor the success of sensory marketing activities, it is necessary to assess consumers' perception of sensory cues. For this purpose, the authors present an exploratory effort to develop a holistic scale to measure consumers' sensory perception along the five dimensions of visual, acoustic, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory perception-the sensory perception item set (SPI). The SPI consists of 20 adjectives (four per sense) and is the first measurement tool that includes, and thus enables a consistent measurement with regard to, all five senses.In addition, the SPI is simple to employ and is applicable to diverse products and industries. Based on three studies, the authors provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the SPI. Further, the results show that the SPI is significantly correlated with three essential marketing-related outcome variables (attitude, word-of-mouth recommendation, and buying intention). Consequently, this paper presents an approach that marketing managers may employ to better understand the consumer and, hence, to receive valuable information for product design or brand communication. K E Y W O R D S consumer psychology, item set, measurement, scale development, sensory marketing, sensory perception Psychol Mark. 2018;35:727-739.

No abstract

Purpose Sensory perception is an important factor to understand and effectively appeal to consumers. As consumers process information consciously and subconsciously, both perception levels (explicit and implicit) are essential to investigate. This paper aims to analyze the effects of explicit and implicit sensory perception on brand experience and brand-related performance indicators and then investigate the correlations between the senses and experience dimensions. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a field experiment in a coffee house. For data collection, the authors used a questionnaire for explicit measures and a response latency measurement for implicit measures. For data analysis, structural equation modeling and a correlation analysis were conducted. Findings The results reveal positive relationships between explicit and implicit sensory perception, brand experience and brand performance in the context of gastronomy. Furthermore, implicit perception acts through explicit perception, and brand experience plays a major role as a mediator between sensory perception and consumer responses. Moreover, visual and haptic perception reveal the highest weights in the structural model and the strongest correlations with the experience dimensions. Originality/value This paper contributes to consumer research by providing empirical evidence for the importance of both the explicit and implicit sensory perception to effectively appeal to consumers. The results give valuable insights on the effectiveness of sensory marketing in generating memorable brand experiences and positive brand performance. Furthermore, the findings provide new knowledge on which senses (explicit and implicit) are related to different types of experiences.

Purpose Advertising is one of the most important components of food marketing. However, there is uncertainty over the optimal means of convincing consumers to buy a product. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of advertising content comprising text (sensory, functional and symbolic messages) and pictures (product image) on food product evaluation. Design/methodology/approach Two online experiments investigating strawberry advertisements were performed. Study 1 incorporated only text, whereas study 2 investigated combinations of text and pictures. Analyses of variance were conducted to determine any significant differences among the three texts (sensory, functional and symbolic) and among the combinations of text and pictures. Findings Study 1 revealed no significant differences. All three texts were well received, which shows the relevance of all the product benefits – sensory, functional and symbolic – for food products. In contrast, study 2 identified significant differences. The data analysis indicated that advertising effectiveness increases with the complementarity of the text and picture. Notably, the combination of the product picture and symbolic text was scored the highest for effectiveness. Originality/value The findings provide new insights into advertising design that food firms can use to enhance consumer product evaluations in terms of expected taste, perceived experience and quality, overall attitude and purchase intention. Further, the results contribute to the research stream of food product benefits by highlighting the relevance of sensory, functional and symbolic design elements.