Calling for a Multisensory Perspective on Customer Service Co-creation

Designing and orchestrating sensory cues is critical to service co-creation, since sensory stimulation has been acknowledged to be central to the customers’ evaluation of service quality and their service experience. Moreover, sensory perception is an essential element of customers’ contribution to service co-creation. The predominant angle from which sensory perception in the literature has been addressed is stimulus centric. That is, research has been focusing on the effects of individual and combined cues on customers’ purchase decisions as well as mental and emotional reactions to specific cues. As a result, existing studies focus only on one sense or on a selection of senses. Thus, a true multisensory perspective is not reflected in research. Shedding light on service co-creation from an actor-centric perspective, the purpose of this article is to understand how multisensory design, i.e., simultaneously considering all five senses, impacts service co-creation.