ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an advertising trend and new marketing model that reflect a major shift in the way advertisers market to consumers. The classic advertising approach no longer follows a mass-market model of consumer decision making, which was based on rational choice, public discourse, and highly textual modes of communication. Advertisers have also discovered that through developing sensory-oriented experiences with products and brands, they can engage an individual’s emotions more directly, immediately, and personally. The shift toward sensory-based emotional advertising follows a sea change in the marketplace. Old mass-market models of consumer decision making no longer operate because advertising media have become more individualized. The rise of emotional marketing reaffirms the popularity of psychological approaches that celebrate emotions as a means of marketing more deeply and directly to consumers. In marketplace, the overwhelming proliferation of products and diverse audiences has overturned marketers’ earlier ideas of marketing based on fewer choices, social uniformity, and consumer rationality.
