Tastes like a symphony: how stimulating multiple senses impacts ad effectiveness

Multisensory advertising has become a prominent strategy in sensory marketing. This study categorizes such advertisements into regular and synaesthetic types to examine differential consumer responses. Across three studies, we found that consumers exhibited more positive attitudes toward synaesthetic multisensory ads than toward regular ones. Drawing on the elaboration likelihood model, consumer inspiration and processing fluency were identified as parallel mediating mechanisms. Notably, the positive mediating effect of consumer inspiration was stronger, while the negative mediating effect of processing fluency was weaker. Furthermore, the study revealed a moderating role of sensory distance. When the sensory distance was close, synaesthetic (vs. regular) multisensory ads not only enhanced consumer inspiration but also alleviated processing fluency deficits, thereby promoting more positive ad attitudes. However, when sensory distance was far, synaesthetic (vs. regular) multisensory ads elicited higher levels of inspiration but poorer processing fluency, ultimately resulting in no significant difference in consumer attitudes toward these two types of ads.