PhD Oral Exam - Pouya Javanshirafshar, Business Administration

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Sensory marketing is shown to be a prominent field in the science and practice of marketing worldwide. A conceptual framework for sensory marketing suggests that what humans sense and receive through their five sensory systems will be perceived in the brain, and that perception may lead to cognitive and/or affective responses. These cognitive and emotional responses can also change consumers' attitudes and behaviors toward products, services, brands, and businesses.

This research identifies gaps in the literature on sound effects in food evaluation as one of the understudied topics in sensory marketing, and addresses less-investigated responses regarding the influence of environmental music on food (chocolate) evaluation.

We focus on food marketing from the perspectives of atmospherics and crossmodal influences in both the physical world and the Internet in three essays. While the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of sensorial signals pertaining to one sense have been studied extensively, it is worthwhile to study the interaction between the senses and how manipulating signals in one modality can influence responses in another.

Essay 1 focuses on the crossmodal correspondence between music and basic tastes. We propose and study new possibilities regarding how ambient sound can alter people’s evaluation of food items and their tastes. It extends the examined relationships to less-studied ones, such as people’s attitudes and judgments about chocolates.

Essay 2 emphasizes the interaction between music and taste, but from the emotional (also cognitive) viewpoint using the well-established S-O-R model. It investigates whether the emotions and feelings generated by ambient music can change people’s responses to the focal food item (chocolate in our experiments). What is new in this research is studying the effect of conflicting feelings on responses.

Essay 3 studies the interactions between music and food in the web environment. Taste is one of the absent senses in the online world. It is known that people rely on accessible signals to make up for the missing one. Thus, it is crucial to study how background signals can affect decisions about missing taste signals on websites, and even in physical stores when direct tasting is not possible. In this essay, we investigate the possible effects of an online food shop’s background music on food choice and expectation.

The method of study is experimentation with human subjects for all the hypotheses of the three essays.

The findings of our research will shed more light on how different human senses affect each other, leading to a deeper understanding of how an individual’s brain functions when exposed to more complex sensory inputs. In a world where food is one of the most crucial factors in individuals' daily lives, exploring new mechanisms to shape food-related behavior could support healthier diets, more enjoyable eating experiences, better and more accurate online food-shopping decisions, and more effective food advertising.