Sensory Marketing

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conceptual note W01C76
March 1, 2019
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Aradhna Krishna
Note on Sensory Marketing: Shaping Consumer

Perception and Behavior
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This conceptual note describes what sensory marketing is, why it is useful for managers, and how it
can be used by a frm. Since sensory marketing depends on how consumers behave, this note also discusses
research in cognitive psychology that shows why these managerial suggestions are scientifc and also
logical. The feld of sensory marketing is growing and has been shown to be pertinent for a vast majority of
industries including food and drink, health and beauty, consumer packaged goods in general, durable goods
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including automobiles, transportation in general, and fnancial services — and it applies in both online and
brick-and-mortar environments.
This note can be used in conjunction with the case “Uncharted Waters at Ventoso Ship Supply: A Sensory
Marketing Dilemma A, B, and C.”i
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What is Sensory Marketing?
Let’s start with my classic example. Hershey’s milk chocolate can be presented in a plain slab or as
a Hershey’s Kiss. The two are identical in formula, but have very different personalities (see Figure 1).
Unfurling the Kisses fag and foil feels like unwrapping a present, and eating it is a completely different and
indulgent experience compared to eating the slab on the left. The haptic sensation of the Hershey’s Kiss in
your hand and on your tongue is different from eating the basic milk chocolate because of its shape; it can
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be rolled around in your mouth and, if left to melt in the mouth, it feels like a teardrop melting on your
tongue. The individual wrapping of small pieces also allows you to have several treats without guilt. Besides
the shape and packaging, the name “Kiss” makes it sound much more romantic and appealing, almost like
you are being kissed. And: Hershey’s does not need to tell the consumer any of this—the product does that
by itself!
This is what sensory marketing is all about—designing products and packaging with subconscious cues
that tell a consumer what the product stands for and provide a desired consumer experience.
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i Cian, Luca, Jenny Craddock, Aradhna Krishna, and Sara Cervai. “Uncharted Waters at Ventoso Ship Supply: A Sensory Marketing
Dilemma A, B, and C.” Darden Business Publishing, 9 July 2018, http://store.darden.virginia.edu/uncharted-waters-at-ventoso-ship-
supply-a-sensory-marketing-dilemma-a. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.
Published by WDI Publishing, a division of the William Davidson Institute (WDI) at the University of Michigan.
© 2019 Aradhna Krishna. This conceptual note was written by Professor Aradhna Krishna of the Ross School of Business at the
University of Michigan. It was prepared exclusively as the basis for class discussion and is not intended to illustrate either effective or
ineffective handling of a situation. The note should not be considered criticism or endorsement and should not be used as a source of
primary data. Professor Krishna, a pioneer in the feld of sensory marketing, has written two books and more than 40 journal articles
on the subject. Harvard Business Review (March 2015) stated Krishna as being the foremost expert in the sensory marketing feld.
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Sheraz Ahmed, Other (University not listed) until Feb 2021. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright.
Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or 617.783.7860
Note on Sensory Marketing: Shaping Consumer Perception and Behavior W01C76
Figure 1
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Milk Chocolate Two Ways — and One Feels Better
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Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Hershey’s Kiss
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Source: Photos taken by the author.
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The Hershey’s example is not unique. In the last decade, there has been a paradigm shift toward
developing more sensorially engaging and interactive products and services. New research highlights the
importance of sensory marketing and embodied cognition — the idea that we perceive the world through
our senses and that our bodily sensations affect the decisions we make without our conscious awareness.
I defne sensory marketing as “marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception,
judgment, and behavior” (Krishna, 2012, p. 332) and have highlighted that “In the past, communications
with customers were essentially monologues—companies just talked at consumers. Then, they evolved into
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dialogues, with customers providing feedback. Now they are becoming multidimensional conversations,
with products fnding their own voices and consumers responding viscerally and subconsciously to them”
(interview with Krishna in Harvard Business Review, 2015, p. 29).
What does this mean for the manager? It means that managers should design their products and
communications to create subconscious triggers that characterize consumer perceptions of abstract notions
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of the product, e.g., its sophistication or quality (Krishna 2012, p. 332). Companies should devise their
marketing offers in an all-encompassing manner, using the senses to defne product experiences and brand
identities that consumers will care about and remember. Strategically, sensory marketing provides a multi-
sensory experience to consumers with the intention of creating additional value. The sensory aspects of
products and their presentation to consumers (smell, sound, touch, taste, and/or look), individually or
through their interplay, shape the holistic customer experience and the interaction between companies and
consumers.
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Why is Sensory Marketing Needed?
Why do marketers now have a growing interest in sensory marketing? Picture a typical consumer who
lives a small town. She watches television where the shows are interrupted by advertisements; she sees
snippets on YouTube and these are preceded by ads; she scrolls down her Facebook page, where posts from
her friends are regularly interrupted by sponsored posts (ads); when she opens a newspaper or magazine she
sees more ads; she even sees ads in a public bus, outside stores, inside grocery stores (point-of-purchase
ads), on billboards, in the mail, on the sides of buses and delivery vans, on signs on lampposts – ads
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surround her everywhere and all the time.
With the tremendous amount of advertising and marketing clutter representing hundreds of brands for
thousands of products, it is diffcult for a single brand to stand out. A marketer fnds it very diffcult to
convince the customer through marketing communication efforts that its brand is better than the others. In
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this world of advertising clutter, any one ad may not be noticed, and even if it is noticed, it may not be read
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in its entirety. Further, even if it is read, the consumer reading the ad knows it is coming from the marketer
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and would be skeptical about the claims being made. The consumer would think: “Of course, the marketer is
trying to convince me that their product is better than the others — whether it is or not.”
However, if the product (or service) is speaking for itself, the consumer is making inferences on her own,
and it is not the marketer who is telling the consumer what to believe. There is no “deliberate advertising,”
and the product is cutting through the advertising clutter to make itself intrinsically appealing. The message
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then becomes much more credible and has a larger impact on how the consumer behaves. Additionally, there
is no reading of ad claims; the product’s presence does not require focused attention by the consumer. The
process of consumer persuasion through sensory marketing is more visceral in nature.
To reiterate, as brands have grown in number, and advertising foods every communication medium,
it is increasingly diffcult for particular products to be noticed and appreciated. Sensory marketing cuts
through the advertising clutter by using subconscious cues given off by the product itself. With sensory
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marketing, the product communicates with the consumer through design elements, consonant with its
desired personality (e.g., “strong” cleaner, “sporty” car), and not through stated claims in advertising.
Examples of Sensory Marketing
In my books, Sensory Marketing: Research on the Sensuality of Products (2009) and Customer Sense:
How the 5 Senses Infuence Buying Behavior (2013), I give dozens of examples of how companies have used
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creative ways to engage the customer through sensory appeal, as in the Hershey’s Kiss example. Examples
below range from food to automobiles to electronic devices.
Another case where product form was changed to create a more engaging product is Dippin’ Dots (see
Figure 2). Here, a new sensation was created by making little pellets of ice cream that melt in the mouth.
The frm claims, “After overcoming the sight of their ice cream beads ‘pouring’ into a cup, there’s the look
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of amazement that ice cream can be ‘tingly and almost crunchy’ (their words!). When the smooth, creamy
ice cream begins to melt in their mouth ... a fan is born.” Given this ability to provide a new sensation, the
ice cream company can charge much more per ounce compared to other ice creams.
The potato chip offers a different sensory insight. Why is the potato chip made bigger than the mouth?
Why do you have to bite it and break in your mouth if you want to eat it (see Figure 3)? One reason is that
when you bite a potato chip, you hear the sharp sound and you think that the potato chip is extremely
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crisp and fresh. That is, the sound of the chip affects your taste perception. One might wonder if this
deduction is just a hunch or based on scientifc research. In fact, it is the latter. In an experiment, people
were put into little booths with headphones and they had to eat potato chips. For some of the people, the
sound of the potato chip being eaten was magnifed, and these people found the taste of the potato chip
to be much more crisp and fresh. The sound was found to be directly linked with a perception of freshness.
Interestingly, the potato chip sound not only affects the person eating the chip, but also people within
hearing distance. When one bites the chip, other people are tempted to eat potato chips as well.
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Figure 2
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Dippin’ Dots
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Source: Photo (https://www.fickr.com/photos/75001512@N00/9171281958) by Joel Kramer (https://www.fickr.com/photos/75001512@N00/) / CC by (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
Figure 3
Person Biting a Potato Chip
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Source: Photo taken by the author.
The automobile industry provides other powerful illustrations of sensory marketing by sounds. In its
2014 M5 model, BMW amplifed and routed engine sounds through the car speakers, even when the audio
system was turned off. The idea was to enhance a perception of the car as sporty. In general, automakers
have paid close attention to the senses for many years: auto designers work hard to optimize the feel of
knobs and the steering wheel, the noise of a door shutting, the sound of acceleration, and of course the
new-car smell. If a sports car should sound powerful and sexy, a minivan should sound comforting and
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reliable, and the click of a child’s car seat should connote safety. All of these sensory inputs are a form of
implicit communication between the car and the car-user that conveys the car’s personality and emotionally
impacts the car-user.
iPod Touch was introduced in 2007 (see Figure 4). Was Apple’s decision to call it “Touch” brilliant or
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just a fuke? In my opinion, the name itself (Touch) made consumers much more engaged with the product
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—they wanted to touch it, to interact with it; then they felt more attached to the product. If the frm had
given the product a different name, given it an alphanumeric name like RXD2, for instance, there would
not have been the same sort of success. Apple then played up the name in its advertising, emphasizing the
sense of touch by showing hand gestures and haptic interactions with the product.
Figure 4
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Apple Website on September 5, 2007
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Source: Photo (http://tinyurl.com/yaa5rfdb) by Wolf Gang (https://www.fickr.com/photos/wolfgangkuhnle/)/CC by (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)
On the topic of electronic devices, let’s also consider the underlying chip. Using the senses can make a
product’s presence felt in contexts where the product would otherwise be invisible! That’s what happened
with the Intel Pentium Chip and its advertising. Intel’s signature sound elevated the chip’s presence from
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being an invisible component with no consumer brand recognition to one recognized worldwide. THX did
something similar with surround sound in theaters. Another sensory signature, or sonic signature, is the
“Hello Moto” of Motorola phones, which provides brand advertising (with no cost) to millions of people
using the product and those within hearing distance, multiple times a day, every single day.
Despite the examples just provided, in wide swaths of consumer industries many companies remain
focused solely on visual attributes and give little thought to other sensory effects. Product developers and
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marketers should change that if they want to be successful.
The Science of Sensation and Perception

In order to understand how non-conscious sensory triggers occur, we turn to neuroscience and cognitive
psychology for explanations.
What is sensation and what is perception? Sensation and perception are stages of processing of the
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senses. Sensation occurs when the stimulus impinges upon the receptor cells of a sensory organ (e.g.,
when light enters our pupils and hits the visual receptors, or when sound waves are transformed into
vibrations that oscillate the hair cells in the cochlea). Sensation is biochemical and neurological in nature.
Perception is the awareness or understanding of sensory information. In Latin, perceptio or percipio means
“apprehension with the mind or senses.”
An easy way to understand the difference between sensation and perception is by considering visual
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illusions. In the café wall illusion (see Figure 5), the horizontal lines are actually parallel. The biochemical
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sensation of light hitting the eyes is recording the horizontal lines as going straight across, at equal
distance from each other at all points. However, we perceive them as not being horizontal—that is, after
interpretation of the sensation by the brain, the lines do not appear parallel anymore; they appear slanted/
wavy. A simple explanation for why is that we have been trained over time to expect things like wooden
planks to bend down when a block (like a brick) is placed on top of them. Therefore, lines with blocks on
top do not appear parallel. The café wall illusion is just one of hundreds of such illusions.
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Figure 5
Café Wall Illusion
Psychology, 22(3), p. 335.
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Source: Krishna, A. (2012). “An Integrative Review of Sensory Marketing: Engaging the Senses to Affect Perception, Judgment, and Behavior.” Journal of Consumer
Of course, vision is just one of the fve senses, and is not the only sense for which there can be
explicitly recognizable differences between sensation and perception. Sound provides other examples, with
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speech recognition being an important one. As I discuss in Krishna (2012), 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” or an “r” sound, the brain will interpret both
as somewhere between an “l” and an “r” (perception)—so both sounds will be heard by Japanese adults as
somewhere between an “l” and an “r” (Wolfe et al., 2006). Here too, sensation and perception are different,
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and both are largely outside of our control. Japanese adults would need pro-active training to hear the
“l” and “r” as distinctly different. Note that native English speakers do not distinctly perceive the sound
(between “l” and “r”) that the Japanese produce—they hear it as an “l.”
In What Ways Can Sensory Marketing Impact Consumer Behavior?
In this section, I consider ways in which sensory aspects of products can impact the consumer: attention,
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recognition, attachment, and emotional response through sensory signatures; enhancing memory for the
product; increasing perceived effciency of the product; increasing mental interaction with the product and
purchase intention; changing the perception itself; increasing feeling of ownership of the product; and
compliance.
Sensory Signatures: Attention, Recognition, Attachment, and Emotional Response

One of the most prominent aspects of any visual sensation is color. A color in and of itself can act as a
sensory signature, as with the robin’s egg blue of a Tiffany’s box (see Figure 6), where the color is uniquely
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associated with Tiffany and has come to connote luxury, sophistication, and love. For many women, the
robin’s egg blue activates related associations about the brand. Another such color signature is the Christian
Louboutin Chinese red shoe sole (see Figure 6). This is used on all their shoes, irrespective of the color
of the rest of the shoe. It is such a recognizable sensory signature that Louboutin has won a lawsuit for
exclusive use of Chinese red soles for shoes that are not red otherwise.
Figure 6
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Tiffany and Christian Louboutin Colors
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Tiffany Box Christian Louboutin
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Arroser/CC by (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)
Note that sensory signatures such as the Tiffany blue and the BMW sound and feel not only bring about
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attention and recognition, but can also evoke attachment and other emotional responses such as love,
romance, status, and luxury.
Enhancing Memory for the Product

The French author Proust is recognized for making the connection between scent and memories in
his book In Search of Lost Time long before scientists connected smell with memory. He talked about how
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childhood memories came fooding back when a scent from childhood was smelled again. The book may have
been fction, but research in the basic sciences, psychology, and recently in marketing has indeed identifed
several biological and anatomical reasons for why scent-associated information may last for long periods
of time. First, the neural systems associated with smell (olfaction) and memory are very closely linked. In
fact, smell is the only sense (olfactory processing) that has a direct connection to emotion and memory
(amygdala-hippocampus complex). Second, Nobel Prize-winning work by Linda Buck and Richard Axel shows
why people are able to distinguish among 10,000 different scents, and highlights the large number of
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genes devoted to smell (more than a thousand). Third, 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.
In terms of scent’s relation to marketing, I have done a trilogy of papers with Lwin and Morrin
exploring how product scent enhances memory for associated information (e.g., brand name and other
product characteristics). In one experiment in Krishna et al. (2010), subjects that were given a pine-
scented branded pencil, along with a 10-item list of its selling points, remembered 3.67 points two weeks
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later, while those with an unscented pencil could recall only 0.87 attributes on average. Note that this
enhancement in memory occured without the pine scent being reintroduced when recall was measured.
In Lwin, Morrin and Krishna (2010), we looked at ads such as that for the television show “Weeds”
where the ad had verbal information, a picture and an aroma (marijuana-smell strip). We already knew
that having pictures increases memory of verbal information (let’s call this the picture-memory effect).
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We show in this research that having a scent enhances recall of verbal information (smell-memory effect),
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but smell also facilitates the picture-memory effect. Furthermore, we show that smell helps both to encode
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information into memory and to retrieve it from memory. In the last of the trilogy, we look at whether the
scent-memory effect can survive the onslaught of additional smell-related information. In Morrin, Krishna,
and Lwin (2011), we show that the scent-memory effect is indeed prone to retroactive interference (from
information obtained later), but that some of the information lost is restored if people smell the original
scent again.
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Since this research was done, it has been used to obtain smell copyrights and to sell scented products
where memory encouragement is desired (e.g., signature smells in hotels; scented pens at political rallies,
etc.).
Increasing Perceived Effciency or Accuracy of the Product

Product characteristics can be manipulated or emphasized to increase the perceived effcacy of the
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product. For instance, Listerine mouthwash hurts in the mouth. The frm could easily make a pain-free
product that is equally effective — in fact, it did make Listerine Zero (see Figure 7), a pain-free product,
but then pulled it from the market. The frm realized that customers felt that the product was working if it
was hurting them. In a different sensory domain, sounds are added to vacuum cleaners to make them appear
more powerful, just as they were in the BMW example discussed earlier.
Figure 7
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Listerine Without Pain
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But can perception of the product be changed by sensory aspects of the product even within the
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technological world? In the online world, we often have to interact with frms through automated voice
systems, such as calling an airline or doctors’ offce or even a restaurant to make reservations; there are also
automated assistants such as Alexa and Echo. Research has looked at how making these automated voices
sound more human can make people like the product more. In Sayin and Krishna (2018), we show that
making these automated voices more human also opens up the products to expectations one would have
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from humans, e.g., greater politeness. This aspect can lead to misinterpreted results. Consider an automated
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voice providing feedback on how you did on an online test. A more human automated voice providing this
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feedback makes the feedback feel less accurate — because people expect humans to be polite and positive
when giving feedback, no matter what the score. The situation is reversed if the feedback is negative,
because people do not expect humans to give negative feedback, and hence perceive negative feedback
from humans to be more accurate.
Increasing Mental Interaction with the Product and Purchase Intention
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Can the specifc visualization of a product in an ad (e.g., whether yogurt in an ad has a spoon on the
left or the right) affect how readily the viewer interacts with the product and imagines using it? Ryan Elder
and I (Elder and Krishna 2012) show that a match between handedness and product orientation (e.g., a
right-handed person viewing a yogurt ad with a spoon on the right, versus a mismatch — spoon on the
left), increases mental product interaction (see Figure 8). This enhanced mental interaction, in turn,
increases the viewer’s intention to purchase the product.
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Figure 8
Three Versions of a Yogurt Ad
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Source: Ryan S. Elder and Aradhna Krishna. “The Visual Depiction Effect…” Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 38, Issue 6, April 2012, Page 1000.
Can certain interfaces increase this mental interaction? In Shen, Zhang, and Krishna (2016), I show
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that when people see an appealing product and mentally interact with it, they are more likely to purchase
it on a touch device (such as an iPad, see Figure 9) versus a non-touch device (e.g., a PC with a mouse). I
show that this happens because the consumer tendency to mentally interact with the product is encouraged
on touch-devices; the mental interaction is congruent with the product being purchased by just touching
its image. The results of this research are consistent with increased sales of more appealing (and unhealthy)
foods like appetizers and desserts in airports since airport restaurants introduced iPad touch-ordering.
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Changing the Perception Itself

Ads for food products typically bring attention to the brand and make people aware of it. In Elder and
Krishna (2010), we show that if the ad brings attention to the multiple sensory dimensions of taste (taste
is actually made up of all fve senses), then it can change the taste perception itself. In one experiment,
we used two different ads, where one ad spoke to multiple senses (a tagline for a chewing gum read
“stimulate your senses”) and the other ad mentioned only taste (“long-lasting favor”). After tasting the
gum, participants listed their thoughts about the item and rated its overall taste. We found that ads
involving multiple senses created more positive sensory thoughts and a higher taste perception than ads
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involving taste alone. This research shows that communication about the senses can change the sensory
experience itself.
Figure 9
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Airport Restaurant with iPad
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Increasing Feeling of Ownership of the Product

A large body of research has shown that individuals value objects more highly if they own them. This
fnding is known as the endowment effect. Subsequently, researchers have shown that simply touching an
object can create a perception of ownership, and can result in an endowment effect (Peck and Shu 2009;
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Shu and Peck 2011). These researchers demonstrate that by merely touching an object (versus not touching
it), people are more likely to buy it — because touch results in a feeling of ownership.
In online environments, touch is not possible. But can a similar feeling of ownership be created merely
by imagining touching the product? In fact, it can. Peck, Barger, and Webb (2013) show that haptic imagery
(imagined touch) can have the same effect on perceived ownership as physical touch.
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Brasel and Gips (2014) look further into online environments. They show that touch interfaces (e.g.,
iPads) can be fairly effective at creating perceived product ownership, merely by people touching the
product on the screen, and resulting in a greater proclivity to buy the products in an online environment.
Their results show that “perceptions of online products and marketing activities are fltered through the
lens of the interfaces used to explore them, and touch-based devices like tablets can lead to higher product
valuations when compared to traditional computers.”
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Compliance
Sensory marketing is being tried out as a way to increase compliance with requests made to the public.
For instance, it was found on trains that people were leaving the toilets very dirty. The sensory interiors
(visuals, smell, feel) of the bathroom were then changed to give the experience of a guest bathroom in
someone’s house. After the change, people left the bathrooms much cleaner.
Music has also been used to change behavior. For example, certain loud music and intense scents keep
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an undesired target segment (older people) out of Abercrombie & Fitch stores; classical music played in
metros is reported to keep vagrants from sleeping there overnight.
These are just a few of the ways in which sensory aspects of products can impact consumer behavior.
The reader is encouraged to think of others.
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Neuroscience and Sensory Marketing
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Advances in neuroscience and neuro-imaging techniques have paved the way for more effective use
and application of sensory marketing as part of the evolving feld of neuro-marketing. Neuro-marketing
techniques study how the brain is physiologically affected by advertising and marketing strategies by
focusing on neural correlates of consumer responses. As Babu and Vidyasagar (2012) note, “this ability
to watch inside the mind to observe how the brain processes sensory inputs like image, smell, and touch,
and proceeds further to reach decisions, gives marketers an opportunity to fne-tune advertisements and
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marketing campaigns, strengthen or extend brands, and design better products.”
A new and rapidly growing method of generating neurological images is functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI). The fMRI technique enables researchers to isolate systems of neurons associated with
functions of the brain, which are activated in response to (sensory) stimuli. For instance, fMRI scans help
neuro-marketers fnd out how consumers react subconsciously to advertising, brands, and products by
revealing the extent of emotional engagement, attention, and memory of a consumer.
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Insights from the use of neuro-marketing techniques have been applied to various fundamental
marketing decision areas such as advertising effectiveness, product appeal, celebrity endorsements, logo/
brand selection, and media selection. For instance, in relation to the effectiveness of using celebrity
endorsements, while marketers have long believed that they help sell products, it was diffcult to pinpoint
how the auditory and visual stimuli associated with celebrities contributed to consumer perception, affect,
and decision processes. Neuroscientists have now determined that dopamine and phenylethylamine food
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our brains when we see a familiar face or hear a familiar sound, i.e. a celebrity (Fugate 2007).
Critiques warn that the feld of neuro-marketing may compromise consumers’ ability to make logical
and, more importantly, informed decisions about purchases in the long term because it allow marketers
to understand the unconscious processes behind consumers’ decisions and consequently equip them with
tactics that might increase consumers’ compliance with marketing messages. Various sensory marketing
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tactics discussed earlier are also considered as being too subtle for the consumer to be fully aware of their
attitudinal processes. Accordingly, there is a growing concern that opportunities to infuence consumers
without their full awareness may increase signifcantly as a result of research on brain activity. Neuroscience
methodologies, especially the use of noninvasive neuroimaging technology, now enable researchers to
probe brain activity at the basic neural level of functioning. There is need to anticipate such negative
potential externalities, which may lead to various diffcult ethical situations. Benefting from the various
advantages offered by such techniques should be considered within the boundaries of ethical marketing and
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the necessary policy implications should be laid out in advance.
What Should Managers Do?
The best way to approach sensory marketing for a business that is promoting a product is to frst try to
understand the ways in which the product may already be sensorially appealing. Most brands already have
sensory value in the marketplace, whether as part of their logo, the design of their product, or their ongoing
commercials that support their marketing efforts. It is important to identify what is already established, and
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then to build on top of that in a systematic way. A business should ask, for instance, if there is something
about the product that is really good from the perspective of aesthetic appeal (e.g., the way the packaging
is, the color, the design). Does it have something about its smell that is very memorable? Is the smell able
to evoke pleasant memories or associations? Is there something the sound the product makes that can be
used to make the product more engaging? What about the jingle — is it well associated with the product?
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In general, a business should work on identifying the sense or senses and the sensory message that
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would work for a brand. A business needs to understand the essence and the intrinsic value of the product
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or service it is promoting and understand which sense(s) will help convey this message and establish a
unique sensory personality, which is engaging and easy to remember. As such, to hype up every sense, which
is unfortunately what many sensory marketing consultants are advocating these days, will probably not
work. One needs to fgure out which sensory elements are really consistent with the product or the service
inherently and build on these strategically.
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Historical Examples
Firms have been practicing sensory marketing for a long time in the same way they have been doing
advertising forever. Consider the lemon dishwashing detergent, which has been around for decades: The
lemon scent makes people feel the detergent works better, even though there often is zero or minimal real
lemon in the product. Some entrepreneur knew about and exploited the connection between lemon scent
and a feeling of cleanliness. However, the real question is whether frms have been thinking about and using
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sensory marketing in strategic and systematic ways.
There are very few examples from the past where frms were indeed considering sensory aspects of
their product strategically. Singapore Airlines (a perhaps over-used example of sensory marketing) is an
exception, where they aimed to establish a true sensory brand experience very early on. A set of brand
tools were introduced to match and highlight the intended brand image. Staff uniforms were made of fnest
silk and the design of the fabric matched the interior décor; fight attendants wore colors that matched
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the brand’s color scheme. The sensory experience of the brand peaked when the company introduced its
signature smell, Stefan Floridian Waters, a unique blend of rose, lavender, and citrus exclusively designed
for the Singapore Airlines experience. Flight attendants wore it as a perfume, it was blended into the hot
towels, and it wafted through the entire feet of planes and lounges. Travelers described it as smooth,
exotically Asian, and feminine, and said that the aroma brought back comfortable and luxurious memories,
which all refect the Singapore Airlines experience.
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Another leading trend in creating new sensations can be found in the restaurant industry. El Bulli, a
restaurant in Catalonia, Spain, has been the pioneer in the feld of molecular gastronomy, sometimes also
known as culinary physics. Culinary physics seeks to use various techniques from chemistry and the other
sciences to manipulate the texture, feel, smell, or shape of food. With dinners costing as much as 250 euros
a plate, meals cooked using molecular gastronomy are clearly very sought after, but it is not only a matter
of taste. Having access to experiences such as eating partially solidifed bubbles of juice or eggs cooked at
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the perfect temperature to affect their shape is worth something to consumers, indicating that molecular
gastronomy is a feld that transcends the sense of taste to create a complete sensory experience.
What are the Cutting-Edge Companies Doing?

In an effort to make better use of sensory marketing, some frms have taken the step of setting up
a sensory science department, which is like a research and development cell focusing on the sensory
perception of their products. The more sophisticated route to following sensory marketing, however, is an
all-encompassing embrace where sensory marketing is “the way marketing is done.” In traditional marketing,
frms make a product and tell the consumers why to buy it. In sensory marketing, the product is created and
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offered in such a way that consumers know why to buy it when they encounter the product (i.e., the product
talks to the consumer), and the promise is engaging and enticing. As discussed so far, sensory marketing
is not just the addition of a cute image or a pleasant smell to a product. It is a rigorous science of how to
convey the personality of the product using all senses. To do so, companies should embrace an experimental
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culture, in which every sensory change should be designed, tested, and considered in terms of the overall
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perception of the product.
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An example of this approach is provided in the case “Uncharted Waters at Ventoso Ship Supply: A
Sensory Marketing Dilemma A, B, and C.”ii In this case, Diana Zanzi is hired by Ventoso to help the company
comprehend the odd sales patterns for its sailboats. Ventoso was seeing low sales for a high-end sailboat
despite its great technical aspects, speed capability, amenities on board, and what Ventoso considered very
good value-for-money. A lower-quality (lower value-for-money) boat, however, sold surprisingly well. Surveys
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done by the company confrmed Ventoso managers’ beliefs that their target customers preferred technically
advanced sailboats. So, they were fummoxed. Zanzi set out to solve this mystery. She contacted Ventoso’s
customers and did her own interviews. The case shows that consumers may not be consciously aware of
how they make choices, and one needs good methods to understand these unconscious preferences. The
case introduces a multisensory interview methodology that Zanzi developed to interview Ventoso customers
and uncover their unconscious sailboat preferences. The case also shows how frms can go about creating
(sensorially — through the visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory aspects) a product that conveys
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the desirable message and appeal, such as a sailboat designed to convey “fast, yet safe.”
What is Happening in the Financial Services and Technology Industries?

The use of sensory marketing is not limited to tangible products. It has also been used in the fnancial
services world. When a bank decided that it wanted to stand for “safety,” it used sensory marketing to make
consumers feel that their money was safe. The bank designed its communications (logos, ads), customer
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experience interiors (interiors of the banks where customers come), and all instruments (e.g., checkbooks)
to be consistent with a sense of safety.
Research in sensory marketing is also exploring how aspects of human voices (such as pitch or volume
of a call center operator) affect the satisfaction level of the target audience. People are realizing that this
is just the beginning and work on voice is far-reaching.
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Conclusion
Our senses are innately linked to our perception of products and services. This important role of the
senses in consumer marketing is, however, only just being acknowledged. Yet this recognition will change
how products are created and sold. The links between marketing and the senses relate to a battery of
questions. How do our senses affect which products we like and which ones we don’t? Can products be
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designed more sensorially so that they stand out from others? Can sensory properties of products be
enhanced to make them more memorable? Can one sensory aspect of a product impact how a person
perceives a different sensory aspect of the product? For instance, will a person drink more wine when the
glass is less sleek and squatter? Will the haptic feel of an appeals brochure from the botanical gardens
impact how much one donates to them? Why are hotels coming up with their own toiletries that have
signature smells? Why does a computer emit a particular strange music each time it is turned it on?
As companies are becoming more aware of consumers’ subconscious responses to products and services,
they are relying more on products themselves – as opposed to advertising and other forms of marketing
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messaging – to infuence consumers by stimulating emotions and bodily feelings.
ii Cian, Luca, Jenny Craddock, Aradhna Krishna, and Sara Cervai. “Uncharted Waters at Ventoso Ship Supply: A Sensory Marketing
Dilemma A, B, and C.” Darden Business Publishing, 9 July 2018, http://store.darden.virginia.edu/uncharted-waters-at-ventoso-ship-
supply-a-sensory-marketing-dilemma-a. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.
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In the past, products carried a limited amount of brand messaging – a label, some marketing copy
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on the package – and design was mainly aimed at function and creating a pleasing appearance. Today’s
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leading-edge consumer-product companies are equipping their products, from appliances to automobiles
to food, with systematic and well-chosen sensory stimuli — lights, sounds, smells — so that the products
implicitly provide their own marketing communications and interactions with consumers. These stimuli
trigger consumer perceptions of beliefs about the products’ character and personality, such as that they are
sophisticated or of high quality. The stimuli can also make a product tacitly appear more or less successful
in doing its job, indicate a function, or even make an invisible product feel visible. Implicit communications
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like these can be more effective than advertising, which consumers tend to discount or resist.
Companies should rethink product design with implicit communication in mind. Implicit communication
through sensory aspects of the product can build loyalty, decrease price competition, and shift the frm’s
focus from price cuts to product design and improvement. If sensory aspects help make the product seem
different and better, competitors’ price cuts will have less of an impact. Sensory signatures, such as the
Tiffany box example mentioned, can create a more lasting competitive advantage given the strong ties
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between sensory experience and memory; sensory modifcations in products can help make cultural variations
more salient (e.g., gold color in a car’s interior and many icons showing on the dashboard indicate an
expensive car in India and China; but not in the United States). Additionally, implicit communications
through sensory experiences are not limited to external marketing but can be strategically incorporated into
the workplace, e.g., to help build a coherent and convincing organization vision and culture. For example,
Facebook’s moveable walls and furniture indicate an adaptable mindset.
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Firms must realize, however, that sensory marketing needs to be practiced with care. When changing
sensory aspects of products, one needs to understand how these changes shape consumer perceptions and
behavioral responses. One should also be careful not to send mixed messages through differing sensory
cues, or to sensorially overload the consumer—a mistake made much too often. For instance, a visually
angular piece of cheese can be perceived as being sharper in taste, which may be a miscommunication of
the brand’s personality. Avoid contra-purpose sensory cues.
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References
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Babu, S. Samuel, and Thalluri Prasanth Vidyasagar. “Neuromarketing: Is Campbell in Soup?” IUP Journal of Marketing Management 11,
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Buck, Linda, and Richard Axel. “A Novel Multigene Family May Encode Odorant Receptors: A Molecular Basis for Odor Recognition.”
Cell 65, no. 1 (April 1991): 175-187.
Craddock, Jenny, Luca Cian, and Aradhna Krishna. “Uncharted Waters at Ventoso Ship Supply: A Sensory Marketing Dilemma (A / B),”
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Harvard Business School Publishing, 2018.
Elder, Ryan, and Aradhna Krishna. “The Effect of Advertising Copy on Sensory Thoughts and Perceived Taste.” Journal of Consumer
Research 36, no. 5 (February 2010): 748-756.
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Responses.” Journal of Consumer Research 38, no. 6 (April 2012): 988-1003.
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of Consumer Marketing 24, no. 7 (November 2007): 385-394.
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Harvard Business Review., “The Science of Sensory Marketing.” (March 2015): 28-30.
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Behavior.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 22, no. 3 (July 2012): 332-351.
Krishna, Aradhna., Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Infuence Buying Behavior. (Springer, 2013).
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2010): 57-67.
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Lwin, May, Maureen Morrin, and Aradhna Krishna. “Exploring the Superadditive Effects of Scent and Pictures on Verbal Recall: An
Extension of Dual Coding Theory.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 20, no. 3 (July 2010): 317-326.
Morrin, Maureen, Aradhna Krishna, and May Lwin. “Retroactive Interference from Scent Cues and the Effect on Product Recall.”
Journal of Consumer Psychology 21, no. 3 (July 2011): 354-361.
Peck, Joann, and Suzanne B. Shu. “The Effect of Mere Touch on Perceived Ownership.” Journal of Consumer Research 36, no. 3 (March
2009): 434-447.
Peck, Joann, Victor A. Barger, and Andrea Webb. “In Search of a Surrogate for Touch: The Effect of Haptic Imagery on Perceived
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Ownership.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 23, no. 2 (April 2013): 189-196.

Sayin, Eda, and Aradhna Krishna. “You Can’t Be Too Polite, Alexa! Implied Politeness of Mechanized Auditory Feedback and Its
Impact on Perceived Performance Accuracy.,” (working paper). 2018.
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Hedonic Food?” Journal of Marketing Research 53, no. 5 (October 2016): 745-758.
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Established at the University of Michigan in 1992, the William Davidson Institute
(WDI) is an independent, non-profit research and educational organization focused on
providing private-sector solutions in emerging markets. Through a unique structure
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Note on Sensory Marketing: Shaping Consumer

What is Sensory Marketing?

Why is Sensory Marketing Needed?

surround her everywhere and all the time.

Examples of Sensory Marketing

Source: Photo taken by the author.

marketers should change that if they want to be successful.

The Science of Sensation and Perception

In What Ways Can Sensory Marketing Impact Consumer Behavior?

Sensory Signatures: Attention, Recognition, Attachment, and Emotional Response

yo Source: Photo (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louboutin_altadama140.jpg) by

Enhancing Memory for the Product

Increasing Perceived Effciency or Accuracy of the Product

Source: Photo taken by the author.

Increasing Mental Interaction with the Product and Purchase Intention

Changing the Perception Itself

Increasing Feeling of Ownership of the Product

Neuroscience and Sensory Marketing

the necessary policy implications should be laid out in advance.

What Should Managers Do?

What are the Cutting-Edge Companies Doing?

What is Happening in the Financial Services and Technology Industries?

messaging – to infuence consumers by stimulating emotions and bodily feelings.

Ownership.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 23, no. 2 (April 2013): 189-196.

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