A sprinkle of emotions vs a pinch of crossmodality: Towards globally meaningful sonic seasoning strategies for enhanced multisensory tasting experiences

Abstract

We report a study designed to determine the most efficient means of pursuing sonic seasoning in international marketing. For the first time, music chosen to trigger specific emotional responses was directly and cross-culturally compared with music chosen as crossmodally congruent with specific taste/flavors (the latter usually referred to as ‘sonic seasoning’).The effects triggered by ‘emotional’ music were more prominent than those triggered by ‘crossmodally-corresponding’ music. Specifically, chocolate was liked more, rated as sweeter, and the purchase intent was higher, when tasted while listening to music that conveyed positive, as compared to negative, emotion. By contrast, the same chocolate was mostly rated as tasting more bitter with the negative music, as compared to the positive music.Companies looking to use sonic seasoning in marketing strategies, should therefore principally aim at intelligently classifying music based on the likely emotions that they can trigger in their customers (at least when thinking globally).