Senses.

The Five Senses:

Our five senses; sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, are our raw data that we take in from the external environment. The feelings we get when we use our senses can greatly determine how we feel about a product. This is because our senses spark memories of what we've already experienced, but can also spark fantasy of what we would like to experience.

Marketers have the ability to use our senses to manipulate our feelings towards products- "sensory stimuli".

Vision:
COLOUR plays a key part in visionary stimuli. Colours of adverts, products, packaging, must not only be eye catching but more importantly must put across an appropriate message to the consumer.

We associate colours with meanings, in our heads we already have connotations of what we identify colours with: For example when we see RED we think fire, passion, excitement, love but also danger and warning.
BLUE meaning calmness, coolness, tranquillity, cleanliness.

WHITE meaning innocent, purity, simplicity. BLACK meaning death, power, mystery, remorse and so on.

However what must be taken into consideration is that different cultures associate different meanings to colours. For example in china red portrays meanings of luck, prosperity and celebration.
Also where we see white to mean innocence, purity, often associated with weddings, in India white is the colour of death, used generally when mourning and worn at funerals.


Smell:

Different scents can often spark different emotions within us. Smells often stir up past memories and we associate them with the things we have experienced in the past.
These can bring memories that can make us happy, sad, angry etc and it is the marketeer who is trying to evoke these feelings to sell a product. For example fragrances frequently use a baby powder scent because the smell connotes comfort, warmth and gratification.

Sound:

Music and sound are also important to marketers. Consumers spend vast amounts of money per year on buying music. Music is heard by million of people every day. Advertising jingles maintain brand awareness and background music can create desired moods. An interesting thing about sound is that a British company believes that even the sound a package makes when you open it can evoke something within a consumer.

Touch:

Moods are stimulated or relaxed on the basis of sensations of the skin, such as a luxurious massage to the bite of a cold wind. Touch usually will relate to things like fabrics, people associate different textures with different qualities. Silk is seen to be luxurious and denim is practical and durable. Lighter more delicate textures are seen to be more feminine and rougher materials are seen to be more manly.

Taste:

Our taste receptors contribute to our experience of many products. As our taste buds become more experienced we can then differentiate between what is good quality and what is not so good quality if we were to be blindfolded and asked to decipher between brands. The most famous being the coke vs pepsi test.