Nowadays, the binary digital information produced by the combination of 0 and 1 permeates every corner of our lives. Reason and hard-cold seem to have the upper hand, but we have not treated our senses badly; from the progressive coverage of appearance and cuteness, With the spread of the two-dimensional and three-dimensional image, the pursuit of sensory satisfaction has become a rigid need.

In fact, in the past two decades, marketers and scholars in European and American countries have gradually realized the powerful role of unconscious stimulation and have been exploring how to use their senses to impress consumers. For example, a high-end restaurant will provide a variety of exquisite goblets, because drinking red wine with a goblet is more delicious than drinking with a water glass; when advertising a cake, you can put a shiny fork on the right side. This advertisement is better than no fork. Is more attractive.

In recent years, many new researches have been carried out around "embodied cognition", an emerging field of psychology. Embodied cognition refers to the strong connection between physical experience and mental state. Physical experience can "activate" mental sensations, thereby affecting our various decisions. According to experiments conducted by professors at Yale University and the University of Colorado, people who hold hot drinks in their hands are more likely to think strangers are friendly than people who hold cold drinks; in a warm environment, people are more likely to follow the crowd.

A large number of companies have already begun to use the senses' influence on our decision-making for sensory marketing. Its marketing activities are mainly aimed at consumers' sense of sight and hearing, because sight and hearing are our main channels for receiving information; while the use of touch and smell is less. Today, when marketing methods continue to be refined and in-depth, unique sense of smell and touch will become a resource that marketers can vigorously dig. This is because the sense of smell is always open, we can easily close our eyes or divert our eyes to avoid visual advertising messages, but the sense of smell cannot be actively closed. Tactile sensation can trigger consumer cravings. When a doctoral student (AnoukFestjens) from the University of Leuven in Belgium (KULeuven) and two professors tested on female college students, they found that girls who had touched boxers were more impulsive to consume than girls who had touched T-shirts. .

The closer you are to the stimulus, the more you desire it

Why is the sense of touch an effective consumer incentive?

Because it can shorten the distance between you and the stimulus, the closer you are to the stimulus, the more you desire it.

We have all had many experiences of impulsive shopping. Think about it, after you (especially a woman) try on clothes or try something that looks delicious, is it more likely to spend money to buy? This is the fundamental reason why businesses encourage you to give it a try. The California Institute of Technology has conducted a study in this regard: When people buy snacks such as Snickers, their willingness to buy increases as the distance between them and the food decreases: people who only see the word "Snickers" Buy the least; people who see the picture or see the Snickers outside the shop window buy a little more; and those who get close to the Snickers in the store buy the most. The researchers said that this is a Pavlovian reaction.

The research conducted by Anuk Van Sijie and the two professors is more interesting. They were invited to do a "customer survey" for a clothing company: Ask some female college students to rate the fabric materials of men’s boxer briefs or T-shirts; They answer some questions related to purchasing decisions. The survey found that women who have touched boxer briefs (a type of "sexual cue") are more impulsive than women who have just touched a T-shirt or glanced at the boxer briefs, and are willing to play in the dice game. The bigger bet. Compared to women who have only seen boxers or touched T-shirts outside the window, they are more willing to spend money on personal hobbies, such as wine and chocolate.

In terms of tactile marketing, one of the pioneer companies is the famous American chocolate company (Hershey). Hershey discovered early on that people would have fun in the process of peeling off the foil packaging of "Hershey's Kiss" chocolate. This fun makes enjoying Hershey's Kiss a special experience. The British ASDA large supermarket chain removed several types of toilet paper from the packaging to make it easier for customers to touch and compare various paper qualities. As a result, the sales of its own brand in the store rose sharply, and the space for the product on the shelf increased by 50%.

Haptics can also be applied to other areas. For example, a survey conducted by the University of Wisconsin and the University of Kent showed that if people saw fabric samples of blankets sent to rescued people in charity brochures held by volunteers, it would be even more important. Willing to donate and take time to help those people. Tactile stimulation will also extend to electronic touch screens. Many surveys have found that when people shop on touch screens, they can feel the attractiveness of products more than when shopping on computers, thereby increasing their buying behavior.

More emotionally attractive olfactory marketing

Among all human senses, smell is the most sensitive, and it is also the most closely connected with memory and emotion. The sense of smell is an intuitive reaction, unlike sight and hearing, which requires the understanding and analysis of the brain. Scientific research has proved that the human nose can remember up to 10,000 kinds of smells, and the accuracy of olfactory memory is twice as high as that of vision; people recall the smell of 1 year ago with an accuracy of 65%, but recall the photos seen 3 months ago , The accuracy is only 50%.

The experiments conducted by Professor Aledhana Krishner of the Sensory Laboratory of the University of Michigan, May Lun of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Maureen Morrie of Rutgers University are just such an example. The three of them found that immersing the pencil with the scent of tea tree oil greatly improved the participants’ memory of the pencil’s brand and other details, and the memory lasted longer: two weeks later, they received an odorless pencil. Examiners, the information that can be recalled was reduced by 73%, while those who got the pencil with tea tree oil smell only forgot 8%.

Scent marketing has three major advantages, including always open sense of smell, uniqueness, and more emotional appeal. We are exposed to a lot of messy visual and auditory marketing information every day, and we relax our vigilance on odor marketing, and usually do not feel "olfactory bombardment." The sense of smell is also more emotionally attractive, because our sense of smell is directly connected to the birthplace of emotions and emotions in the human brain-the right limbic system.

Companies such as Starbucks and Disneyland are all well-known masters of olfactory marketing. A few years ago, Dunkin' Donuts, famous for its doughnuts in China, Japan and South Korea, conducted an experiment in South Korea in order to promote its other main product-coffee: When Dunn Dule advertising songs are played on buses on these lines, the pre-installed atomizer on the bus will release the aroma of coffee because of its voice recognition technology, which will cheer passengers. This activity increased the number of customers of Dunn’s stores near the bus station by 16% and sales by 29%. Scent is also one of the best ways to intensify positive emotions. For example, a European home improvement store found that after using a special fragrance that emits the smell of new lawn cuts, customers' evaluations of store employees have greatly improved.

Many star hotels are also good at using olfactory marketing. They emit different scents in the lobby to enhance the guest’s experience and produce olfactory recognition, thereby subtly creating a kind of memory, so that when people smell this smell, Will remember the pleasant experience he once stayed in the hotel. One of the famous cases is the Hyatt Regency Vendome in France. In 2002, when the hotel was planning its logo scent, the perfumer decided to use the scent of "Patchouli" because this scent is low and it is considered to be the red of the hotel. Brown tones and various luxurious details are the best match; in addition, the perfumer also added other scents such as citrus and natural cool wood extracts. In the end, the smell was described as "the fresh cement poured on the raw oak, with a little fresh cinnamon on the raw dough, with the rich, thick yellowish brown silk texture smell."

Senses have a profound impact on people’s attitudes, mood, memory, etc. Although sensory marketing has existed for many years, many companies have only realized that sensory perception can deeply affect the deep parts of our brain. There is huge potential to be tapped. . With the rapid advancement of technology, the communication between companies and consumers is developing into a multi-faceted dialogue. Marketers need to find opportunities to connect with people’s senses in different consumption scenarios, so that products can make their own voices through multiple channels and use senses to Create and enhance the characteristics of products, so that people will remember.