Multisensory Magic: Creating Unforgettable Shopping Experiences

The role of physical stores is changing. We know we bring it up a lot, but it really is the most important consideration for any retailer who has physical stores or is planning to open one, and the sector is thankfully catching up to this notion. Nowadays, brands understand that differentiation is about more than product alone and using physical retail spaces to simply satisfy the functional needs of their customers will no longer cut it. Stores need to generate emotions and sensations that connect with customers on a deeper level – and they must use all 5 senses to achieve this.

Experiential retail is a phrase that gets used a lot in the industry today for precisely this reason. Consumers are exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day across all platforms, they are experiencing an information overload as every brand attempts to grab their attention.

Multi-sensory experiences stand out, and not just in the way that consumers may notice, these moments that engage sound, smell, taste, and touch have a huge subconscious effect on brand impact, customer loyalty, and purchasing intent.

Senses and Experience

Your senses entirely inform your experience in any environment. What you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel creates every impression you have of everything around you, and this is no different when you walk into a retail environment. Some of this is conscious, some of it is not, but the impressions a consumer creates in these moments will ultimately create their opinion and emotional reaction to your brand.

Emotions play a crucial and influential role in making decisions; sensory stimuli trigger emotions and influence cognitive processing and purchasing decisions. Simply put, consumers are more likely to buy a product or stay loyal to a particular brand if that brand evokes a positive emotion within them, often achieved through sensory marketing. The colour of a showroom, the type of music playing, and the scent in a store can be decisive in evoking positive feelings toward a brand and creating memories for customers.

Multisensory marketing therefore offers a real competitive advantage, taking a physical retail location far beyond the concept of “show and tell” and into a new territory that can create emotional responses and memories in customers.

Research by PwC has found that 73% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product if the experience feels personal and Nielsen research indicated that 67% of customers recall brands better when multisensory elements are incorporated into the shopping experience. Personalisation and emotional engagement are physical retail’s biggest advantages over online shopping and brands must take advantage of the uniquely engaging environment that they can create for their customers.

Selling with Senses

Sight is the dominant sense in marketing, setting the tone for a store’s brand. Elements like lighting, colour, displays, and product assortment shape customer perception before they even step inside. Colours can evoke emotions—red stimulates appetite and excitement, making it popular in food retail, while blue conveys trust and professionalism, often used in finance. Lighting also plays a role: bright lights create an energetic, fast-paced shopping experience, encouraging impulse purchases, while dim lighting slows the pace, fostering a relaxed atmosphere. First impressions are primarily visual, so ensuring a well-curated aesthetic is essential.

Sound, though often subconscious, is just as influential. Research shows slow classical music increases browsing time and sales by 38%, while faster music encourages quicker purchases. Playing music that aligns with a brand’s target audience can also foster familiarity and loyalty. A well-curated soundscape strengthens brand identity—think country music in a Wrangler store reinforcing its theme and aesthetic. Aligning sound with sight can drive purchasing behaviour, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach; retailers must tailor these elements to their brand’s identity.

Touching products builds confidence and personal connection, increasing purchase likelihood. Premium products, in particular, benefit from tactile engagement, as handling high-quality items reinforces their value. Interestingly, restricting touch can also drive sales. A Wisconsin School of Business study found that when customers are denied access to certain products, their desire to interact increases, leading to higher engagement with other available items. Whether encouraging or limiting touch, brands can use this sensory tool to influence behaviour.

Smell is directly linked to memory, triggering emotional responses that can be more powerful than rational thought. Research in the International Journal of Hospitality Management found that restaurant-goers exposed to a lavender scent lingered noticeably longer than those who smelled lemon. Many brands leverage scent to create strong associations—Starbucks circulates the aroma of coffee beans to stimulate cravings, while DIY stores like Lowe’s infuse the air with the scent of freshly cut wood to evoke memories of home improvement. Harnessing scent effectively can leave a lasting impression on customers both new and returning.

Taste, closely tied to smell, strongly influences memory and emotion. Sampling campaigns are a prime example—Marketing Week found that 63% of consumers buy a product after receiving a free sample if the experience shifts their perception positively. Luxury brands use taste more subtly to personalise experiences, offering VIP customers complimentary beverages to enhance the shopping experience and reinforce exclusivity. Taste, when thoughtfully applied, can deepen brand engagement and customer loyalty.

Brands Doing It Well

Apple

The Apple Store has one central conceit – they want you to interact with their products. By combining bright lighting and clean white walls and surfaces the stores feel like modern, energetic art museums in which you are allowed to touch the exhibits. They are essentially playing on a perception of restricted interaction to create more enthusiasm around actually using the product in-store. The tactile interaction that follows deepens the customer's connection with the brand and greatly increases their confidence in the purchase. Especially for Apple, a brand whose central identity focuses on its premium product, allowing customers to feel the craftsmanship that is so integral to the brand as a whole reinforces their perception of Apple and their wares.

IKEA

IKEA sells furniture that is simple, versatile, and easy to fit in your home. But how do you sell something so personal and conceptual and increase customer confidence in the product? You place the product in its environment. IKEA stores guide customers through “room” after “room” filled with furniture and homeware of all shapes and sizes, from bedframes to plant pots, and suddenly customers can picture every product in their own home. And, since visiting an IKEA store is often a day trip, they have included a restaurant. Suddenly buying furniture becomes an experience that customers associate with a memorable taste as well as a memorable shopping experience – a venture so successful that they have expanded many of their city-based stores to have more standalone food courts!

Dunkin’ Donuts

Dunkin’ Donuts took multisensory marketing to the extreme in Korea. On certain buses, when the Dunkin’ Donuts jingle played on the bus radio, nebulizers emitted a coffee aroma throughout the bus. Combining visual marketing via posters with auditory marketing via the jingle, reinforced by an olfactory response, Dunkin’ Donuts created a vastly subconscious but extremely sensory experience. The campaign was so successful that their retail locations close to bus stops reportedly climbed 29% and customer traffic increased 16%.

Implementing Multisensory Marketing

In today's retail environment creating physical retail spaces that leverage your customer's senses to provide immersive and influential experiences is a must for any brand. Not only does it encourage short-term buying behaviours, but it can also have a huge impact on customer’s impressions and perceptions of a brand as a whole.

As mentioned earlier, this is not a one-size-fits-all answer, to best utilise these sensory tools brands should map out how different senses can feasibly be activated across the customer journey and what their impact will be; Vision and touch, for instance, trigger conscious responses, while taste, smell, and hearing impact emotions on a deeper level. To flawlessly execute these moments in-store there needs to be careful consideration of how product and experience interact and what emotional response you want your customer to have.

Create spaces where customers can fully experience your brand with soundscapes, scents, and textures that communicate your brand story in a subtle, memorable way - and ensure that your sensory identity is consistent across all channels. The retail experience is evolving and brands who use all the tools at their disposal to create these elevated experiences for customers will see improved purchasing intent, stronger customer loyalty, and increased brand impact.