Human Senses: How It Impacts Marketers

Despite the fact that we are using more and more marketing resources communicating with consumers, the returns are ever diminishing’ (Lindstrom 2005). Consumers are bombarded with information and, as a result, modern-day marketers need to investigate new ways of breaking through the advertising clutter to reach their target consumers more effectively. In an attempt to break through this clutter, Berry, Carbone and Haeckel (2002) argued that managers should create value for customers by means of experiences.

As a result, companies started to move away from traditional ‘features-and-benefits’ marketing toward creating experiences for their customers by means of so-called ‘experiential marketing’.

Sight

The sense of sight is probably the most developed and prominent human sense (Hultén et al. 2009; Krishna 2012; Wright 2006). Hultén (2011) also states that sight can be regarded as the most powerful sense for discovering changes and differences in the environment, and it is also the most common sense in detecting goods or services. Of all five human senses, the sense of sight is then also the sense that has been focused on mostly by marketing practitioners (Elder et al. 2010; Hultén et al. 2009).

According to Arnould et al. (2004), most past research on vision in consumer research has examined colour or more complex visual stimuli, such as words and pictures. Results of previous studies, for example, indicated that human exposure to warm hues (red-orange-yellow) raises blood pressure, heart rate and perspiration, whereas exposure to cool hues (green-blue) has the opposite effect.

In applying these findings to commercial environments, results of studies showed that yellow telephone booths increase the speed of phone calls, yellow walls and fixtures result in people moving through stores at a faster pace, and orange fixtures in fast-food restaurants stimulate hunger. Colour can therefore play an important role in the success of marketing stimuli, such as the colour used in advertising or colours used for package design (Arnould et al. 2004; Wolfe, Kluener & Levi 2006).

Smell

It is believed that the human smelling ability develops and reaches a plateau at about the age of eight and then declines as humans grow older. The sense of smell is the only sense that cannot be turned off (Suhonen & Tengvall 2009). This sense is the most direct of all senses, and odour can affect significantly an individual’s evaluation of things and other people (Aitamer & Zhou 2011; Arnould et al. 2004).

The sense of smell can also be related to pleasure and happiness and is believed to be correlated closely to emotions and memories (Hultén 2011). It should, however, be noted that, even though the sense of smell is less important for humans than for many other animals, odours have a persistent and omnipresent quality that may be difficult to escape (Arnould et al. 2004). Evidence seems to suggest that good or bad feelings generated by smells in humans are being associated with upbringing, culture, learning, emotion and psychology (Wright 2006). For scent to be used as a marketing tool to attract attention to a specific product, it is vital that the scent corresponds with the product (Suhonen & Tengvall 2009). Teller and Dennis (2012), however, argue that the effect of ambient scent on consumer-related reactions has received relatively little attention from marketing researchers in the past.

Hearing

Even though hearing is largely considered to be secondary in terms of perceptual power when compared with the sense of sight, the auditory system (ears) is capable of picking up and conveying various kinds of information to the brain (Wright 2006). Arnould et al. (2004) argue that sound patterns can create a mood of relaxation or stimulation, and point out that religions and cults have been using music for many years to induce trances or other mood states. According to Assael (1995), advertisers frequently make use of music through jingles or as background themes to create positive associations with brands, whilst Hultén (2011) points out that the sense of sound can be linked to emotions and feelings and can impact brand experiences and interpretations. Marketers are, however, advised to pretest such stimuli to ensure that positive associations with a brand will indeed be created (Assael 1995).

Touch

Touch or tactile perception is a sense that is different from sight and hearing in that it is not localised to one area of the body. Humans can therefore ‘feel’ through the skin with any part of their bodies, be it through the hands, fingers, feet, toes, arms, legs, head, face, chest or bottom (Wright 2006). According to Arnould et al. (2004) there are various complex sensations that constitute the sense of touch, and many parts of the human body are much more sensitive than others. Arnould et al. (2004) also point out that numerous studies have highlighted the vital effects of touch. Studies have, for example, shown that babies that were massaged gained weight as much as 50% faster than unmassaged babies, that touch is critical in the psychological as well as the physical development of children and that sustained touching can reduce a human’s heart rate and can have a calming effect on a person (Arnould et al. 2004). Assael (1995) noted that consumers also use ‘feel’ as a means of determining quality by, for example, using the feel of textile fabrics, clothing, carpeting or furniture to evaluate the quality of the specific product.

Taste

According to Wright (2006) the average adult person has approximately 10 000 taste buds that are able to detect the chemical constituents of food and beverages. Taste buds are grouped according to themes (salt, sour, sweet and bitter) at various locations inside the mouth. People use the tip of the tongue to taste sweet things, the back of the tongue to taste bitter things and the sides to taste bitter things, whilst salty things are tasted up front and along the surface (Arnould et al. 2004). Assael (1995) pointed out that taste can be an elusive perception. Researchers have called for more research to investigate the connection between the senses (Krishna 2012; Puccinelli et al. 2009). Wright (2006) and Krishna (2012) concur that senses rarely operate in isolation. The results of the study being reported here coincide with these findings, as sight, sound and smell by themselves did not reveal any significant differences in the tastiness of the brandy. The results revealed further that consumers recorded higher levels of tastiness when little disruptions were present. Suhonon and Tengvall (2009) noted that the type of product has significant importance on the effect that the senses have on the consumer experience, specifically in the case of the alcohol industry.

Therefore, with regard to the research conducted in this study, one should keep in mind that consumers might have experienced sensory overload. Krishna (2012) confirms this notion by stating that marketers could overload consumers’ senses. Managers have become increasingly aware of the need to create value for their customers in the form of experiences. Applying sensory marketing seem to be an easy, effortless way of doing so. However, research revealed that marketers need to incorporate all the senses to actually enhance consumers’ experiences. Incorporating all the senses is not always possible and, if it is possible, is usually costly. The results of the current study revealed that, in their endeavour to incorporate all the senses, marketers could overload consumers’ senses and, as a result, actually reduce the consumer experience.