Achini

What you touch, touches you!

Achini researches on Sensory Marketing

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Achini Ranaweera

Buying is an important decision that involves time and money. People make these decisions based on many factors. Some of these factors are based on the basic human senses. Working to improve people’s impressions on products engaging the five human senses is referred to as sensory marketing.

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Achini with her supervisors Dr. HS Jin (left) and Professor Brett Martin

Achini Ranaweera has always been interested in investigating aspects of sensory marketing. She says that ‘touch is a vital human sense, yet research carried out in that area is rather slim’. She believes that being able to touch the merchandise, to feel its texture, weight and other attributes may affect the decision to buy. 

Achini graduated from the Department of Textile and Clothing Technology at UOM and followed her dreams to the UK to pursue a Masters degree at the University of Westminster, London. She was attached to the School of Media, Arts and Design and completed the Masters successfully. She then returned to the same faculty at UOM where she was once a student, to join the academic staff. During this time, she was presented with an opportunity to pursue Doctoral studies at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Her choice of study involves Haptics on Consumer behavior.

Achini's Research 

This research takes one to the good old, ‘old school’ of selling things. Remember the time beyond digital marketing, where we touched and felt items such as clothes, textiles etc. before we bought them? Well, Achini takes us right back to those days, working with the effects of touch on selling to consumers.

Information obtained based on the sense of touch is known as Haptics. When a person touches the merchandise, that physical interaction brings positive or negative thoughts about the item. This process is known as the brand impression. Brand impression could affect the decision to buy.  Achini believes that creating positive brand impression via the sense of touch could be used to improve sales between businesses to consumer as well as between person to person.

Weight and texture are two properties that consumers react to, when they touch a particular product. So, Achini is investigating customer impressions based on individual and combined effects of weight and texture. She has developed three items to test these properties – a photo frame for texture, a remote control for weight and a water bottle for the combined effect of texture and weight.  She has employed a mixed method approach using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Initially, she conducted three qualitative exploratory studies, involving 13 fashion industry professionals in Australia.  She then followed with three lab-based consumer behavioral experimental studies, involving a sample of 472 consumers from Brisbane, Australia.

Achini revealed that the information collected so far does indicate that touch affects impressions about a merchandise. She adds, ‘in particular, impressions about brand personality, aesthetic appeal, perceived quality and willingness to buy, have been found to be affected’.

Award winning journey with QUT

Achini is carrying out her research at the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. She feels very fortunate to be able to study at QUT. ‘My supervisors Prof Brett Martin and Dr. HS Jin are experts in their disciplines and have always been very supportive, and I appreciate that very much’, says Achini, talking about her experiences at QUT.   She says that she gets access to a large number of databases and that she makes good use of the Language support service provided by QUT.

Achini has bagged several awards for her research. She has won multiple awards from the Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (ANZMAC). These are for the best early stage PhD proposal in 2017 and best paper award in 2018. She has also received commendation at the QUT’s Business School Research Colloquium. Some of her latest work is yet to be published, and we expect to hear about them in the near future.  

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Accepting the award at the 20th ANZMAC Gala Award Ceremony

Future endeavors planned

Achini is all geared to complete her research in 2019. Upon completing her PhD at QUT she plans to return to UOM and participate in further nurturing the research culture at the Department of Textile and Clothing Technology by strengthening its analytical and methodological aspects. She also wants to actively engage in research, specifically in consumer behavior and design issues in marketing, and contribute towards the development of the Sri Lankan apparel industry.

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