Abstract
The digital transformation of marketing leads to new forms of interaction with consumers. It has been established and well known that auditory stimuli generally affect human behavior. However, in the field of sensory marketing, only limited attention has been paid to the role and effects of audition in online marketing. In this research, we will further explore how sound influences consumer product selection in a digitalized setting. We have designed and performed an experiment in which respondents in a webshop environment were asked to select a bottle of wine from two different countries while hearing stereotypical music samples representing one of these countries. Our conclusion: In an online setting, auditory stimuli strongly influence consumer selection. In the case of constructed preferences, this effect was considerably stronger compared to well-defined preferences. These insights can help to further develop the effective use of sound stimuli in new forms of sensory marketing, such as virtual reality and other digital experiences in the marketing and sales context.
Highlights
The digitalization of our societies leads to considerable changes in how we connect
To check the main relationship, a chi-square test was conducted for each type of wine
The results indicate a clear connection between stereotypical music and the wine choice of consumers
Summary
The digitalization of our societies leads to considerable changes in how we connect This has a major impact on how industries work, and in particular on how companies interact with customers (Mazali, 2018). At the start of the social media era, these platforms focused mainly on visual aspects like photos and text; nowadays, other senses start to play an important role. This recent development reached the field of marketing, where the importance of multisensory interaction is being widely acknowledged (Petit et al, 2019; Spence et al, 2019; Starostová, 2017; Wiedmann et al, 2018). Some even argue that there is currently a ‘sensory explosion’ (Hilton, 2015)
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