Co-creating multisensory e-commerce experiences: An exploratory study case on luxury products

Abstract

This research aims to investigate whether giving customers control over the sensory cues can drive a higher willingness-to-pay (WTP) for luxury products in an online retail context. We assume that luxury brands can increase their consumers’ WTP through two pathways: 1) by increasing the number of sensory cues of the online store interface, 2) by providing consumers with control over the given sensory cues. In order to test these assumptions, we conducted an online survey experiment. We found empirical evidence suggesting that giving participants control over the audiovisual cue (i.e., brightness and volume interplay) yields a higher WTP than the visual cue (i.e., brightness) alone. The findings contribute to bridging the gap between the fields of multisensory marketing and customer co-creation, as well as providing managerial insights on implementing the visual and auditory components in the online retail context. Keywords: Multisensory Marketing; Sensory Stimuli; Multisensory Integration; Co-creation; Sensory Control; Online Retail; Willingness-to-Pay; Luxury Brands