All or Nothing in Sensory Marketing: Must All or Only Some Sensory Attributes Be Congruent With a Product’s Primary Function?

Given the challenges and costs of implementing high sensory congruence, this article examines whether all sensory attributes, such as product color and ambient music, must match a product's primary function to ensure favorable product evaluation or whether a match of only some sensory attributes is sufficient. For this purpose, we consider multiple sensory attributes and their fit with a product's primary function in terms of key semantic associations. In contrast with approaches that focus on a single sensory attribute and its fit with a product's primary function, this approach allows investigating the impact not only of high versus low sensory attributes–function congruence but also of partial sensory attributes–function congruence. We conduct three experimental studies in online and field settings and two product settings (cooling and heating pads) that consider sensory attributes at the product and ambience level across the senses of vision, smell, and hearing. Our findings show that depending on its type, partial sensory attributes–function congruence can lead to favorable product evaluation similar to high sensory attributes–function congruence or unfavorable product evaluation similar to low sensory attributes–function congruence. Thus, sensory attributes–function congruence has non-linear degressive or progressive positive effects on product evaluation. Overall, these findings indicate that if properly designed, a match of only selected sensory attributes with a product's primary function can indeed lead to sufficiently favorable product evaluation and, thus, help avoiding unnecessary effort in implementing high sensory congruence.