Abstract:

Product knowledge and the prior product use experience are two of the key factors influencing consumers when they are deciding to purchase a product. According to Court et al (2009), consumers have four primary phases of decision making for purchasing: initial consideration, active evaluation, or the process of researching potential purchases; closure, when consumers buy brands; and post-purchase, when consumers experience them. In the initial consideration phase, communication about the product use experience is critical for consumers to move on to the next process to make the purchasing decisions. Communicating the prior product use experience is a key challenge related to cosmetic products, and sensorial benefits are some of the key factors for purchasing decisions. Sensorial benefits of cosmetics are mainly communicated via visual images in advertisements. Sonification is a communication approach that uses audio waves (e.g., sounds and/or instrumental music) to transfer information. According to Kramer et al (1999), Sonification is defined as “a transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation”. Sonification has also been successfully used in data analysis and exploration tasks, proving fruitful where visual techniques have not, such as sensory substitution for visually impaired users (Kramer et al 2010).