Investigating the Sensorial Marketing Methods in UK Clothing Retail Sector

Abstract

It is essential to understand the customers’ sensory stimulation in the store’s environment. All the five senses of humans in which hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell are included play a very imperative role in human experiences and are associated with the human emotions and memories. In the clothing sector, the sensory experiences not only draw the attention of customers, but also stimulate positive, strong and distinctive feeling across all the human senses. Interior furnishings and fixtures, lighting, music, store’s temperature, fragrance in the store and display layout of the stores are the multiple sensory cues that are found in this case. All these cues play a vital role in arranging the inner side of the stores. In this study, the case study of New Look is selected. It was the only fashion store in the UK and with the passage of time; it has become one of the famous and leading fashion brand. New Look is a fashion brand that is using the most sophisticated sensorial marketing strategies in order to attract the customers. The researcher used survey method in this research and the questionnaire is utilised as a data collection tool. The research is quantitative in nature; hence the quantitative data is collected by administering a questionnaire to the targeted population that is the customers of the New Look store in the UK. The research’s main purpose is to assess their concerns about sensorial marketing and also to evaluate the consumers’ behaviour. The researcher is has administered the questionnaire by a web link for Facebook and also by Google.docs which is a free service to develop, gather, collect and analyse data. The findings provide significant and appropriate data which is supported by several theories in the literature. Based on the results of the primary research the following two findings are evident: (1) sensorial marketing is not much adoptive technique in the fashion retail sector as it does not use sensorial marketing techniques in order to attract consumers (2) the techniques of sensorial marketing are not only efficient for clothing sector, but also considered as a key success factor for this sector.

Keywords: Sensorial marketing, UK retail sector, consumer behavior