Technology and interconnectivity make it possible to buy worldwide. More competition is in the market, and the client must find other ways to choose a product besides their utility, and that is where the experience takes place. Therefore, this study aims to explore the role of the five human senses in consumer shopping intention by their satisfaction. Grounded in the consumer culture theory (CCT) and the stimulus organism response (SOR) model, the authors propose a model to explain the relationship between the human senses and shopping intention. The study used a sample of 313 store clients in Northeastern Mexico. A questionnaire was utilized for the recollection of the data, and the testing of the hypotheses, structural equation modeling (SEM). Research supports four of the five hypotheses, suggesting that taste, sight, hearing, and touch, through satisfaction, conduct a shopping intention. On the other hand, the smell did not correlate with consumer satisfaction.
TopIntroduction
Years ago, stores used to implement techniques related to the product, place, and service to increase sales, all of them applied to marketing strategies (Fernández, Arribas & Martín, 2020). Nowadays, information technology and interconnectivity give consumers new ways of shopping worldwide. In the same way, that provides more products, brands, and stores to compare before buying (Sachdeva & Goel, 2015). As a result, the competition and the commodities increase giving people to choose not only a product necessity, but they also need to connect with the product itself (Mostafa & Kasamani, 2020), they need to feel something more, and there is where sensory marketing goes. People are feeling more than any decade, that is a crucial line to cross-talking about emotions and feelings because they appeal to stimulate the five senses through an experience.
Pine and Gilmore (2011) talked about the experience as a new wave, they named a new economy: The experience economy. They said the product is not enough, all the product alternatives to shop make the consumer oversaturate, giving a chance to increase and create value through their experiences. Feel is more than tactile, it involves the five senses to have a perception, which also incites imagery processing (Haase et al., 2020, p. 4), and that is why they are involved together. In consequence, new tools in sensory marketing terms have been increasing online (Reina & Jiménez, 2020) and in-store. That is why nowadays is impressible to connect with customers' experiences by their senses (Gómez-Suárez et al., 2019). Now, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to pay attention to actions to innovate on that way (Nencheva, 2018).
There have been some studies related in northeast Mexico, for example, the one made by González et al. (2019), the article concludes that sight, smell, and touch impact the decision-making of the people in the state of Tamaulipas; but it has its limitations, and this investigation could decrease the gap left behind. In the same way, we haven't noticed more papers talking about sensory marketing in the region, so this kind of studies must increase the information. Also, this research study aims to provide an extended understanding of the consumers' behavior, focusing on the influence of the sensory marketing used by the stores at the point of sale and how they influence their shopping intention.
Consequently, the objective of this paper is to analyze if the stimulus perceived by the five senses evoke satisfaction and if they end with a shopping intention. According to the main purpose of the study, the structure of the document has the next structure: in the first place we present the literature review about sensory marketing, satisfaction, and shopping intention; in the second place, a description of the methodological elements used; in third place, the results are presented, and finally, we abord the findings and the discussions of this piece of work.