cover image Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior

Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior

Aradhna Krishna. Palgrave Macmillan, $30 (208p) ISBN 978-0-230-34173-9

Though we live in a wired age, information still comes to us through only five senses. Advertisers are faced with the task of understanding and manipulating how a consumer receives information through these senses. It is this interplay between how we receive and process information (consumer psychology) that Krishna, a marketing professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, examines in depth. Krishna dedicates a chapter to each sense, providing a brief physiological overview before analyzing the relationship each sense has to marketing and customer choice. The writing is fluid but uneven; psychological sections flow easily into those about consumer behavior while more scientific sections remain conspicuously dense. Illustrations and optical illusions throughout help demonstrate the way perception and choice interact, and display how changes in presentation impact a consumer’s impression and consumption of a product. Using examples, Krishna highlights how advertising and marketing tactics manipulate a consumer’s senses. The book would have benefitted from a focused discussion of the way Internet marketing has changed this advertising landscape. As an overview of the myriad aspects of advertising, the book works well. But practical application requires a more thorough text. (Apr.)