Consumer Behavior Summary (6314M0159Y)
Topic 1 – The Psychological Core
1.1 An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the
senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior – Krishna
(2012)
Sensory marketing: Marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and
affects their perception, judgment and behavior. Can be used to create
subconscious triggers that characterize consumer perceptions of abstract
notions of the product (e.g., sophistication or quality) – the brand’s
personality.
Subconscious triggers which appeal to basic senses may be a more
efficient way to engage consumers. Sensory triggers may result in
consumers’ self-generation of (desirable) brand attributes, rather than
those verbally provided by the advertiser.
From research perspective: Sensory marketing implies an understanding
of sensation and perception as it applies to consumer behavior.
Sensory marketing is an application of the understanding of sensation and
perception to the field of marketing – to consumer perception, cognition,
emotion, learning, preference, choice, or evaluation.
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-biochemical (and neurological) in nature.
,Perception: The awareness or understanding of sensory information.
Visual perception biases are important for 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.
Direct distance bias: Whereby direct distance between the end-points
of non-straight lines of equal length affects their perceived length – the
one with the shorter distance between endpoints is perceived to be
shorter.
Haptics
Aisthesis (sensation): Our five senses are ordered hierarchically, with
“touch” on top, and the other senses increasing the acuity of the touch
sensation.
Development of senses: Touch, smell, taste, audition, and then vision.
Peck & Childers (2003a): Need for Touch scale, picks up individual
differences in need for touch.
Instrumental: Functionality; for a specific objective, to buy a
product.
Autotelic: Captures compulsive touch or the emotional component
of touch – touch for the sake of touch.
Humans touching humans
Higher oxytocin levels have shown to lead to greater generosity towards
strangers. Touch increases oxytocin levels, but only when it was followed
by an intentional act of trust.
Economic theory indicates that if one is totally rational one should give
nothing since there is no rational motive for the trustee to return any
money back to the giver. However, in practice, givers generally give and
trustees return, since giving money signals trust and evolution dictates
that acts of trust need to be reciprocated. Touch alone does not increase
oxytocin levels but touch followed by an act of trust does.
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.
Laws of sympathetic magic. Law of Contagion forming the basis for many
of the magical practices and rituals, such as voodoo and strict rules for
meal preparation. Law of contagion: Suggests that when a source object
touches a target object, the source will continue to influence the target
even after it stops touching it.
,Law of sympathetic magic: The source magically transferring some of
its properties to the target through touch.
Physical contact of a target item with a disgusting source item seems to
lead to feelings of disgust towards the contaminated items.
Laws of contamination 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. The mere thought of contamination affected people’s evaluations.
Smell – a focus on how perception affects learning
The transfer of olfactory information differs from that of the other senses,
none of which have as direct connection to memory.
Physical and neural proximity of the systems associated with
olfaction an memory.
The limbic system, containing the olfactory bulb, amygdala and
hippocampus, is characterized by quick synaptic transfers among its
members.
Amygdala is commonly recognized for its role in emotion, and plays
a large role in determining emotional memory.
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 retrieval cues were rated as more emotional
than those evoked by other types of cues.
Product scent and memory
Product scent increases memory for associated information. Also, scent
enhances recall of verbal information, and scent-based retrieval cues also
increase the facilitative effect of pictures on recall (make it even
stronger). The two smell-effects occur after a time delay and occur both at
encoding and at retrieval.
Pleasant scents can enhance evaluations of products and stores, and
increase variety seeking behavior.
Audition
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.
Sound of food plays a role in taste perceptions, impacting perceived
freshness as well as quality.
Music in advertising can be used to impact ad persuasion by
impacting mood and involvement.
Ambient sound (e.g., music in hotels, stores) can influence
consumer mood, actual time spent in a location, perception of time
spent, and actual spending.
, Music affects choice of wine: more French (German) wine when
French (German) music was played.
Fundamental frequency (voice pitch) and vocal speech rate are two
important influencers of listener response to verbal communication
and they can affect personal perceptions of the speaker. Low-
pitched voices are more favorable than high-pitched voices.
Taste, consumption and satiety
Taste is susceptive to external influences: physical attributes, brand
name, product information (ingredients, nutritional information),
product packaging, and advertising.
Lee, Frederick & Ariely (2006) found that disclosure of ingredients
only affected taste of a beer when disclosed prior to consumption,
signifying a change in the experience due to the ingredients.
Advertising that emphasizes multiple sensation results in better
taste perception than one emphasizing taste alone.
Expectation disconfirmation: People judge tall-thin containers to
contain more volume than short-fat ones. However, after consuming
liquid from these containers, subjects feel they drank more from the
short-fat containers than the tall-thin ones. People think the tall-thin
containers have more liquid, but when they drink from it they feel
this is not so, and over-adjust.
Guiltless gluttony: Asymmetric effect of size labels can result in
larger consumption without the consumer even being aware of it.
Habituation: Reduced physiological and behavioral responses after
extended or repeated exposure to a stimulus. People can overcome
habituation effects by mentally recalling various alternatives they
have also consumed in the past. Satiation is partly constructed in
the moment.
Perception affects cognition – grounded cognition
Grounded cognition bodily state: Cognition that is affected by an
unmoving physical condition that one is in.
One holds a particular bodily state which results in certain behaviors
and thought processes.
If one is looking at a hill with a heavy backpack on one’s back.
Grounded cognition based on situated action: Cognition impacted by
movement that is not locomotive in nature, that is, the whole body is not
transported; one’s body mass remains in the same coordinates but some
parts of the body are moved.
Vertical (horizontal) head movements impacted agreement
(disagreement) with editorial content of a radio broadcast.
Embodied cognition: Bodily states need to be involved for cognition
which is not necessarily true since even mental imagery or mental
simulation may be enough to drive cognition.
Grounded cognition: Our bodily states, situated actions, and mental
simulations are used to generate our cognitive activity (Barsalou, 2008).
