Sensory Experiences and Consumer Creativity

Creativity is an important element in today’s consumption environment. Recently, the field has observed an increasing interest in examining how sensory experiences that people have while interacting with the external environment might affect creativity. While this line of research offers significant theoretical and practical implications, it is in its early stage, and the findings are rather fragmented. Thus, this article aims to provide a systematic review of the extant literature that bears closest relevance to consumer research, focusing on when and why sensory experiences can affect consumer creativity. In addition, based on such a review, we offer testable hypotheses with the intention of motivating more research in this fascinating domain.