Sensory marketing (defined as ‘marketing that engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior’, Krishna 2012) and digital marketing are two fast-growing areas of research in marketing. The current proposal aims to investigate these areas with lenses of cognitive psychology and emotions. This would help advance the research into these newer areas of Marketing in Qatar. This proposal has four specific areas of inquiry. In the first two, the proposal is interested in investigating sensory marketing and connecting it with the emotions of consumers. In these, I will be looking at shapes of logos/objects in order to connect them with emotions, evaluations, memory for the brand attributes, and gender. In the other two inquiries, I will be focusing on digital marketing where I will be looking at video ads and online ratings (stars rating indicated by a consumer that accompanies any online review). In the first area, I would like to investigate the time required for consumers to feel the emotional aspects of an ad and how this can be applied to online video platforms like YouTube where users have an option to skip ads after 5 seconds. In another aspect of digital marketing, I would like to investigate the impact of different interventions on the accuracy of online ratings.
I plan to explore collaborative partners in Qatar, once some areas of the current proposal show promising results based on the studies. In addition, I would be interested in pursuing future research funding to further develop some of the areas that show promise. As such, this research is aligned with the research project’s requirements for NPRP funding. For example, the current research is ‘focusing on subjects that are highly promising in terms of commercial and technological potential’, ‘encouraging a more cross-cutting/interdisciplinary approach to projects’ (as it combines different areas in psychology and marketing which are less studied in marketing), and because of the recency of these topics in the research in business, ‘stimulating scientific excellence and the advancement of knowledge in Qatar’. In addition to these, this research will engage students in the research process. One research assistant will be hired from CMU-Q. The research assistant will have valuable experience of the research process in some of the newest areas in Marketing. Furthermore, the proposal includes experiments that might involve the participation of the students, along with the debrief on the experiments, which will broaden the understanding of the students about methods and research questions in these emerging areas of research. In addition, I plan to hire one research associate for the projects, which in addition to helping the projects, will also allow the associate (from Qatar) to develop skills and experience students to work in these areas and gain valuable experience. All these would be benefits from this research to Qatar.