The sensory perception item set (SPI): An exploratory effort to develop a holistic scale for sensory marketing

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.

Healthy Advertising Coming to Its Senses: The Effectiveness of Sensory Appeals in Healthy Food Advertising

“…In other words, every single taste is a combination of all our five senses [15]. This is why, more recently, advertising researchers have focused on sensory marketing, which is defined as marketing that engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior [13][14][15]. Given the daily overload of advertisements that consumers are confronted with, it seems that unconscious triggers, like those appealing to the basic senses, may be a more efficient way to appeal to consumers [15].…”

“…A common assumption in existing food research is that consumers want to make healthy food choices, but, in reality, many consumers rather consider taste than the prospective health benefits of the food [12]. As such, a potential effective means to promote healthy food is using food advertising that appeals to consumers and enhances their taste perceptions of healthy food.Recent research on advertising effectiveness has focused on sensory marketing as an efficient way to engage consumers [13][14][15][16]. Sensory marketing engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior [15].…”

“…Recent research on advertising effectiveness has focused on sensory marketing as an efficient way to engage consumers [13][14][15][16]. Sensory marketing engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior [15].…”

Shitsukan — the Multisensory Perception of Quality

“…As the results reviewed in this section demonstrate, shitsukan perception occurs in the tactile, auditory, and olfactory modalities when experienced unimodally (see also Haase and Wiedmann, 2018). Of course, that said, the 'million dollar question' here is whether those assessments of shitsukan, or material quality, that are made under unisensory conditions have any predictive value as far as what people will perceive, or report, under conditions where multiple senses may be used in product evaluation (Ballesteros et al, 2005).…”

Marketing sensorial: el concepto, sus técnicas y su aplicación en el punto de venta

“…En línea con esto, también se hace interesante conocer el concepto de umbral absoluto que, para Valenti & Riviere (2008) es la intensidad más pequeña de un estímulo que puede percibirse. Así, estudios como los de Schiffman y Kanuk (2005), Hulten (2011) o Haase & Wiedmann (2018) han demostrado que, en condiciones ideales, los sentidos humanos son capaces de percibir estímulos tan sutiles como los equivalentes estimados en la vida real. La expresión "en condiciones ideales" ya es significativa de que la sensibilidad de nuestros sentidos depende del nivel de fondo de la estimulación.…”