Toward Multisensory Customer Experiences: A Cross-Disciplinary Bibliometric Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

An in-depth understanding of multisensory customer experiences could inform and transform service experiences across the touchpoints of customer journeys. Sensory research in service and marketing disciplines mostly refers to individual senses in isolation. However, relevant insights could be gleaned from other disciplines to explore the multisensory nature of customer experiences. Noting the fragmented state of research surrounding such topics, the current article presents a systematic, objective overview of the content and theoretical foundations underlying the notion of multisensory customer experiences. Seeking a holistic understanding and research agenda for service research, the authors adopt both text mining and co-citation analyses overlaying findings from the cross-disciplinary foundation to uncover relevant theoretical, conceptual, and methodological developments. The resulting research agenda encourages scholars to employ diverse theories and methods to investigate multisensory stimuli, their integration, and perception, as well as the link between multisensory customer experiences and emotions. These insights then can inform the design of multisensory omnichannel service experiences.