Consumers experience products and services through their five senses. However, the full sensory experience of shopping in a physical store becomes limited to a screen when moving to online shopping. In this course, we will explore the latest advances in online sensory marketing. We will understand how the lack of some sensory stimuli can impact consumers’ perceptions and behaviours, and how to correct this using crossmodal cues. For certain products, including perfumes or specific food/drinks such as coffee, it is important to create a virtual aroma or flavour environment to engage the consumer. Another point of importance is the risk of sensory overload. Adding too many layers of sensory information without a clear objective may add noise to the consumer’s journey.

The course is composed of two live sessions:

• Theoretical session (2h): presentation and discussion of the main concepts and scientific investigations of online multisensory marketing.
• Applied mentorship session (2h): presentation of real life examples of multisensory websites, discussion of solutions and strategies of application to specialty coffee digital marketing.

INSTRUCTOR:

Fabiana Carvalho, PhD

Fabiana Carvalho is a Brazilian neuroscientist who received her MSc in Biochemistry and her PhD in Psychobiology studying neural processes of perception and memory. She has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher on a project investigating sensory perception as an anticipatory and constructive process instead of a mere passive and reactive process.

She is currently a collaborating researcher at the University of Campinas, Brazil. Her research project “The Coffee Sensorium” is focused on understanding multisensory flavour perception, particularly the influence of extrinsic factors (that is, ambiance) on the expectation and perception of flavour in specialty coffee. This research project has been conducted in collaboration with Prof Charles Spence at University of Oxford, UK.