| Abstract | This thesis asserts that understanding sensory brand experience is fundamental to successful brand management and research. Yet very little progress has been made in both theoretical development and empirical research investigating how sensory brand experience can contribute to understanding all the dimensions of key brand performance variables - customer satisfaction, brand attachment, customer lovemarks and, crucially, brand loyalty. Based on a cross-domain review of the literature including experiential marketing, sensory marketing, service marketing, atmospherics and branding literature, this research develops a conceptual framework to study the factors influencing sensory brand experience and to determine how that, in turn, contributes to the building of brand loyalty, through customer satisfaction, brand attachment and customer lovemarks. It also investigates the role of employee empathy in moderating the effect of sensory brand experience on customer satisfaction, brand attachment and customer lovemarks within the context of a retail setting in China.
To achieve this goal, a mixed method research design was adopted; a predominantly quantitative study that relies on the exploratory inputs of qualitative data gathered from the field. To evaluate research measurement scales, this research first reviewed the literature, followed by the qualitative research. The qualitative research not only allowed the author to gain a rich understanding of the research phenomenon, but also enabled the researcher to identify potential new items based on the data provided by interviewees. The validity of the measurement scales was investigated via 10 interview and 4 focus groups. Next, the quantitative research proceeded to gather responses of consumers in China through 512 self-administered questionnaires. The quantitative data were tested applying IBM SPSS Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS) 26.0.0. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was subsequently applied to test the measurement model and hypothesised structural model. The model reported a good fit to the data, good discriminant and nomological validity as well as well-attested reliability.
The main contribution of this thesis is the construction of a model that explains the antecedents, moderator, and consequences of sensory brand experience. The results of the empirical study show that visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and taste sensory cues have a direct positive effect on the sensory brand experience. This finding illustrates that it is the combination of the five sensory cues in a brand setting rather than any single stimulant that has a strong impact on sensory brand experience. Furthermore, sensory brand experience is found to have a direct positive effect on the dimensions of customer satisfaction, brand attachment and customer lovemarks. Additionally, brand loyalty is directly affected by customer lovemarks dimensions. This implies that customer lovemarks is a key early-stage intermediary brand variable between sensory brand experience and brand loyalty dimensions. However, the influence of the dimensions of customer satisfaction and brand attachment on brand loyalty is revealed to be complex, as some dimensions influence brand loyalty positively while others do not. Similarly, employee empathy positively moderates the relationship between sensory brand experience and customer satisfaction, as well as brand prominence, which is one dimension of brand attachment, while others have a negative influence. The findings indicate that in the context of a mall setting, employee empathy has a limited role in sensory-driven processes and suggest that in the management of large-scale and brand diverse environmental settings, the moderating effect of highly socialised factors has a lesser role to play compared to design and ambience factors.
Furthermore, this research addressed the lack of conceptualisation of sensory brand experience in the existing literature by first conceptualising sensory brand experience as an independent construct. This research also provided a new definition, defining sensory brand experience as the internal processing of brand data from a brand setting via an entrainment of exteroceptive and interoceptive processing resulting in brand sensations, brand affects and subjective feeling states. At the same time, this research provided the boundary parameters that differentiate it from other related constructs such as brand experience and sensory experience. Overall, these conceptual contributions provide a theoretical foundation on which further development of the sensory brand experience concept can be built.
Whilst all existing studies have adapted the brand experience measurement scale consisting of only 3 items to measure sensory brand experience, this research produced 8 reliable and validated measurement items to measure sensory brand experience. The scale will be helpful not only for future research but also for marketers. By highlighting the sensorial dimensions underlying a firm’s branding operations, this research extends our knowledge of the internal processes underlying the development of key brand performance variables. Hence, this thesis contributes to managerial practices by providing practitioners with new tools to shape a truly multisensory marketing strategy. |
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