Sensory Marketing and Brand Trust: A Case of Sports Shops Customers

The present study was conducted with the aim of study sensory marketing and brand trust among sports shops customers in the Mazandaran province. The research used a descriptive-correlational method with field survey for data collection. The statistical population consisted of all customers of the Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Puma and Majid sports shops in the Mazandaran province. Given the unlimited size of the population, 384 individuals were selected through simple random sampling. The sensory marketing questionnaire of Hosseini and Pourkiani (2015) and the questionnaire of customers’ trust of Ueacharoenkit (2014) were used for data collection. The reliability of both questionnaires was confirmed by 10 PE university teachers, and their validity was 0.87 and 0.88 respectively based on the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The normalized coefficient of kurtosis, the Pearson correlation test and path analysis in the SPSS software were used to test the research hypotheses. Based on the research findings, there was a significant positive relationship between sensory marketing and brand trust among sports shops customers in the Mazandaran province. It was revealed that the senses of sight, hearing, and smell had a significant positive impact on customer trust in the brand, whereas the senses of taste and touch did not. The regression analysis results showed that 61.6% of the variance in customer trust is related to sensory marketing. The results confirm the necessity of developing indicators of sensory marketing such as the senses of sight, smell, and hearing.Clearly, by creating a sensory or affective experience, customer trust could be improved among sports shops customers.