Consumers’ and marketers’ interest in online consumption and buying has grown remarkably as demand has grown due to technological advancement and environmental and social changes resulting from the current COVID-19 crisis [1]. However, the growth is not solely quantitative because consumers also want to encounter a more pleasant shopping atmosphere that is similar to how they have previously experienced it. This includes the sensory perception of goods and services. This gradual evolution of attitudes toward online sensory media has not been sufficiently captured in most published literature. People are increasingly buying and consuming online, and the COVID-19 crisis has further augmented competitive pressure. The growing intensity of competition and homogeneous corporate services are making it more difficult for suppliers to attract consumer attention in online environments, where sensory interaction is traditionally limited to mainly visual and auditory input [2]. Therefore, success depends on sellers’ ability to combine textual and visual stimuli on e-commerce websites to effectively convert visitors into buyers ^[3][4][3,4]. Consequently, rwesearchers focus on and argue that the sensory appeal [5] within the online customer experience process is crucial to an economically successful e-commerce platform. 

Website creators and marketers, on the other hand, can utilize numerous models and measurement methods that address the websites’ quality from a holistic perspective. For instance, Aladwani and Palvia have developed an instrument for measuring user-perceived web quality ^[6][8]. Furthermore, Fernandez Cavia et al. have presented a web quality index (WQI) for official tourist destination websites ^[7][9] and Abdallah and Jaleel are focusing on website appeal by developing an evaluation framework ^[8][10]. In their study, they compared a total of 15 other website assessment models covering different industries and perspectives. Several additional studies have proposed evaluation frameworks and criteria in the field of websites, e.g., Chiou, Lin, and Perng 2010 ^[9][11] for a literature review as well as Bleier et al. [3]. However, with regard to online sensory marketing, there is no methodology to comprehensively analyze specific e-commerce websites for sensory components. Simultaneously, a need is emerging to turn the e-commerce shopping experience into an online sensory shopping experience [2].

There is currently no sensory marketing model present that incorporates digitization trends and focuses on sensory aspects of communication in online environments. A need is emerging to turn the e-commerce shopping experience into an online sensory shopping experience. Although marketing research strives for sensorily designing e-commerce websites to help online retailers enrich the online shopping experience, guidelines, and an appropriate measurement model for choosing and evaluating these design options are lacking, revealing an important research gap. Therefore, two research objectives are derived for this work.

The internet has become the main driver for presenting and selling products in an increasingly digitized world [2]. The time spent online continues to rise ^[10][12]. Thus, sensory marketing comprises the targeted, strategic generation of advertising potential for all five human sensory stimuli ^[11][13]. Krishna defines sensory marketing as “marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception, judgment, and behavior” ^[11][13]. Additionally, based on the predominance of bisensory marketing ^[12][14], stationary and online awareness of a sensory consumer approach is rapidly growing ^[2][13][14][2,15,16]. According to Zajonc ^[15][17], sensory-level processing and retrieval seem to be automated and can affect preferences.

Furthermore, specific sensory information on products and services can influence people’s attitudes, purchasing intentions, and consumption ^[16][18]. Imagine the sound of opening and closing a car door, the smell and taste of freshly brewed coffee, or the feel of the textile structure of a new dress. All these sensory stimuli offer valuable information about the value of products and can significantly influence the purchasing decision process ^[11][13]. Consequently, advertising messages always have a more substantial effect if they affect the consumer through more than one sense ^[17][19]. As a result of changing buyer behavior, sensory marketing has increasingly become part of scientific discourse ^[11][17][13,19]. However, what strategy should be chosen if products are marketed via the internet on e-commerce websites? The fundamental problem of selling marketing goods via e-commerce is that some human stimuli cannot be directly addressed. Although numerous scientific contributions focus on implementing sensory elements in online environments ^[2][18][19][2,20,21], no holistic evaluation initiatives of these individually addressed sensory stimuli exist. Therefore, rwesearchers address this previously described research gap through the theoretical foundations of sensory imagination, sensory deprivation, and sensory overload to develop an assessment proposal to capture and evaluate sensory elements. Figure 1 briefly illustrates the research model used for the study’s exploratory nature.

Current research underpins the ongoing trend in focusing on sensory imagery as a bridge to new technologies in the digital marketing context ^[2][20][21][2,22,23]. Research on the phenomenon of sensory imagery, which refers to the experience of one of the human senses via the activation of another human sense, has been scarce ^[21][22][23,24]. According to Macinnis and Price, “imagery processes are evoked as sensory experiences in working memory” ^[23][25], and sensory imagery can appear in any sensory modality ^[24][26]. By generating images for each sense, sensory information can be retrieved in the form in which it is perceived and processed ^[21][23]. However, when shopping via e-commerce websites, haptic, olfactory, and gustatory sensory stimuli are limited. However, as Chao and Martin ^[25][27] indicate, viewing a product can lead to the same neuronal activities as actual contact or use, proving that mental contact and handling a product can be simulated. ResWearchers consider that this finding is also valid for e-commerce websites under the assumption of mental simulation ^[2][16][19][2,18,21]. These repetitions can activate some of the same brain areas that were engaged during the initial experience, which can evoke comparable sensations ^[26][27][28,29]. Hence, owing to sensory imagery, these senses can be addressed indirectly via the visual and auditory senses ^[21][28][23,30].

However, several studies in the field of neuroscience have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to prove that the level of sensory stimulation caused via sensory imagery is generally weaker than the actual perception caused by addressing a certain sense directly ^[21][29][30][23,31,32]. Although sensory imagery can be enhanced by reenacting sensorimotor processes ^[30][32], there is no evidence that imagination can be equated with direct perception. Furthermore, imagery depends on several variables, such as the vividness of mental images ^[31][33] and the likelihood of the individual evoking them ^[32][33][34,35]. The disparity between perception and imagery is further supported by an earlier study from Unnava, Agarwal, and Haugtvedt ^[34][36], who found that imagery in one modality is reduced when perceptual resources are used in the same modality. Lastly, Elder and Krishna state that “As sensory imagery formation requires perceptual resources, occupying these resources leads to weakened imagery” ^[21][23]. Elder and Krishna ^[35][37] also proved that humans mentally simulate the movements that can be performed with a visually shown product, implying that companies should present products online as realistically and tangibly as possible ^[2][19][2,21]. Nevertheless, imagery can compensate for the actual sensory stimulus ^[28][36][30,38]. Peck, Barger, and Webb ^[37][39] addressed whether imagining the touching of a product can generate and strengthen the feeling of ownership. Their findings show that imagining the touching products can lead to an equally high feeling of possession. The result generally connotes that the more realistically the viewer can imagine the product in his own hands, the more significant the endowment effect becomes. Therefore, the imagining of an action can increase the advertised product’s attractiveness and the consumer’s willingness to buy ^[38][40]. Krishna and Morrin ^[39][41] also demonstrated that haptic information in the form of texts could affect the consumer’s perception that an actual touch is not essential. Reading can evoke sensory imagination and lead to neuronal activation in corresponding brain regions ^[40][42]. For example, the primary olfactory cortex is activated when strong smells are read ^[41][43] and the taste buds in the mouth are activated when prepared food is described ^[26][28]. The linguistic style in which verbal content is conveyed or the characteristics of the text—including the choice of words and the use of questions, specific pronouns (you, your), and adjectives—can influence product conversions and consumers’ perception of website effectiveness ^[42][43][44,45].

Based on numerous scientific studies from which reswearchers collected the OSMI, less or no sensory communication on e-commerce websites can be detrimental to the online sensory consumer experience. Researchers cWe call this effect online sensory deprivation (OSD) and define it according to the definition of Solomon et al. ^[44][46]: Online sensory deprivation is a process by which the consumer is deprived of an extensive lack of sensory stimulus perception in the online environment, leading to a disorienting and frustrating customer journey. A lack of external stimuli (e.g., colors, sounds, people, conversations) can contribute to thought disorders and malaise. In extreme cases, this occurs when certain essential sensory stimuli are deprived, such as gustatory texts and images on food websites. Lastly, the absence of such sensory modalities in online environments can cause consumers to become bored and short dwelling time on the viewed website. The early beginnings of the internet reflect this in that the text-heavy pages quickly demotivated people from continuing to browse and caused users to not see internet browsing as enjoyable. Additionally, the need for touch (NFT) ^[45][47] is a mediating factor that makes conveying haptic sensory impressions on the internet more essential. Yazdanparast and Spears ^[19][21], for example, conclude that a good mood can compensate for the frustration caused by a lack of haptics for people with a high NFT and provide findings to overcome OSD.

Given the complexity of sensory processing, as projected on the sensory communication quality of e-commerce websites, a “more-is-better approach” [3] is not necessarily the best option to choose. Exaggerating the sensory appeal to consumers can negatively affect purchase decisions ^[46][48], and one should always ask, as Riedel and Mulcahy suggest, “Does more sense make sense?” ^[47][49]. From a sensory marketing perspective, the possibility of addressing all five senses in a targeted manner must not lead to the five senses being entirely addressed. Addressing two to three senses might be sufficient. Homburg, Imschloß, and Kühnl ^[46][48] conducted a study about sensory overload and presented test persons with different sensory influences and excitation levels. They found that excitation congruence combinations of these stimuli contribute to a higher willingness to pay and more favorable product evaluations. First, this supports the importance of sensory congruence in responding to consumers. Second, the study demonstrates that when three sensory stimuli are used in a retail environment, one stimulus should have a lower excitation level. If three strong sensory stimuli are used, the willingness to purchase a product may decrease and result in a less positive product evaluation. In the field of digital sensory marketing, we can assume that sensory overload can lead to an aversion to the visited website. However, as Krishna ^[11][13] stated, sensory overload is as easy to achieve as information overload, even if scientific research is still greatly needed.