The Effects of a High Fidelity Vibro-Kinetic Multisensory Experience on Implicit and Explicit Brand Recognition

Over the past few decades, cinemas have been using diverse and immersive technologies to enhance the moviegoer’s experience. One of these technologies is a vibro-kinetic motion seat, which provides high fidelity haptic feedback perfectly synchronized with the movie scenes. This article investigates the effect of this technology on product placement memorization. Using electroencephalography to measure implicit memorization and a brand recognition task to measure explicit memorization, we studied the difference between an artistically enhanced high fidelity vibro-kinetic feedback cinema experience and a traditional audiovisual cinematic experience. Results of a within-subject experiment suggest that there is no difference between these two conditions for explicit memorization. However, for implicit memorization, the high fidelity vibro-kinetic experience produces increased frontal amplitude on the P3 component of the event-related potential, whereas the classical audio-visual cinematic experience produces increased parietal amplitude on the P3 component of the event-related potential. This suggests that the high fidelity vibro-kinetic experience has an implicit effect on a spectator’s memorization, which is in line with prior research in that it points to the creation of a stronger associative network leading to more complete memories.