BOOK REVIEWS
2011;28:611–615
conditions, place of purchase, after-sales support, and
user communities. This offer both increases the ben-
efits the target customer notices in the offer and de-
creases the costs they experience in buying and using
it. Positioning the offer in the mind of the customer is
the final step in building the market for the innova-
tion. Positioning statements look deceptively simple
but their impact is great. They need serious thought
and debate among the project team before they fix the
final design of the innovation. At the end of the chap-
ter the toolkit includes a simple positioning template
with an example of how to use it (pp. 265–66).
‘‘Putting It All Together,’’ Chapter 8, summarizes
and integrates the author’s ideas and opinions for
helping innovation managers achieving significantly
greater increases in value in bringing innovations to
market. ‘‘My intuition is that most global firms are
good at significant incremental innovations and this is
what they do most of the time. It is not true that most
innovation is minor or trivial. Where the real chal-
lenge lies is increasing the proportion of successful
breakthrough innovations. If this is 15 to 20% of all
innovation now, then huge returns will accrue to those
raising these proportions to 25 to 30%’’ (p. 288).
References
Kim, W. C., and R. Mauborgne. 2005. Blue ocean strategy. Boston:
Harvard Business School Press.
Moore, G. A. 2005. Dealing with Darwin: How great companies inno-
vate at every phase of their evolution. New York: Portfolio.
Hardenbrook, D. R. 2010. Book reviews. Journal of Product Innovation
Management 27 (2): 292–94.
George Castellion
SSC Associates
Sensory Marketing
Bertil Hulten, Niklas Broweus, and Marcus Van Dijk.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. xiii þ 183
pages. US$48.00.
The authors—business academicians and/or market-
ing consultants—wrote this book based on their
curiosity about applying the five human senses to
explore sensory marketing in practice. Sensory mar-
keting is defined through global marketing strategy
and tactics; chapters are dedicated to each sense
and sense experience and include examples of how
J PROD INNOV MANAG 613
companies have delivered sensory experiences,
sense expressions, and sensorial strategies. ‘‘Brand
soul’’ is described as brand with emotional, sensual,
and value-based features (Ackerman, 1995). Delivery
of the ‘‘supreme sensory experience’’—applying all
senses at the same time (p. 173) via sensory marketing
and creating a personal touch to express the brand
soul through all the senses—is illustrated in the clos-
ing chapter. The human senses are at the center of
sensory marketing.
The authors set the stage by providing context with
discussion of marketing dynamics and society. Wave 1
is the development of agricultural society, Wave 2 the
creation of the modern industrial society, and Wave 3
the development of contemporary society (called the
binary society), defined by shifts in cultural values and
digital technology and characterized by globalization,
diversity, and pluralism of ideas, knowledge, and
brands. Two opposite societal phenomena (homoge-
nization or standardization) and (heterogenization or
diversification) combine into ‘‘glocalization,’’ indicat-
ing that both globalization and localization are taking
place. These changes demand different requirements
for developing and strengthening strategic marketing.
The authors cite Zaltman (2003, p. 158), contending
that the human senses tend to be overlooked in tra-
ditional mass- and relationship-marketing theories,
and encourage marketers to understand how brands
are interpreted in the human brain. Sense strategies
are introduced and exemplified as a way forward for
our binary society of consumers who are emotional,
rational, and sovereign.
As a basis for experience marketing to overcome the
challenge that has emerged of differentiating brands
with glocalization (Lindstrom, 2005), the authors sug-
gest: (1) consideration of individualization as lifestyle,
(2) three driving forces (identity creation, self-fulfill-
ment, and sensory experience), and (3) five different
types of experience—sense, feel, think, act, and relate,
recommended for use by Schmitt (1999, p. 35).
The authors delve into each of the five senses, in-
cluding aspects of brand by sense. Highlights of real-
world examples that serve to ‘‘whet your appetite’’
follow in five sense chapters. Scents that form and
strengthen brands for perfumes and foods/beverages
and enhance car, airplane, and work environments, as
well as Internet, hotel, and signature scents that im-
pact consumer sensory experiences are discussed.
Sounds that form associations and trigger experience
through jingles, voice, and music that contribute to
sound brand and reduce ‘‘noise’’ are reviewed, as well
614 J PROD INNOV MANAG
2011;28:611–615
as signature sounds. The aesthetics of sight and image,
the importance of color and contrasts, light and light-
ing, and symbols in displays/storefronts and packag-
ing are appraised. Taste (considered the individual’s
supreme sensory experience [p. 112] and ‘‘the intimate
sense’’ [p. 115]) is described as a social sense that can
be influenced by names, dependent on setting, and
acquired (learning can improve taste experiences).
The touch sense (called the three-dimensional sense)
involves physical and psychological reactions, impact-
ing well-being with touch, temperature, weight, form,
and haptic technology, and can applied to increase
comfort. Our senses are connected; multiple or all
senses should coalesce to form a product congru-
ency—natural and harmonious compatibility for the
brand/product.
The authors provide the rudiments of the classic
definition of sensory analysis as ‘‘a scientific discipline
that measures, interprets, and analyzes the product
quality, for example, of packaging, cosmetics, and
food’’ (p. 158). Other definitions within the field often
include application of principles of experimental de-
sign and statistical analysis to the use of human senses
(sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing), without lim-
iting the definition to exclusive attention on product
quality. While still an important aspect of sensory
work throughout industry, this discipline has ad-
vanced beyond the quality genre. The authors, not
directly associated with the sensory scientific commu-
nity, do miss a few current viewpoints. For example,
the taste map has been ‘‘debunked’’ by the scientific
community for years; the reality is that all qualities
can be tasted anywhere on the tongue, though differ-
ences in sensitivity may be present across regions of
the tongue.
As a practicing sensory scientist for the past 25 þ
years, I was intrigued by the book’s title—a must read
to see what it was about. Having conducted many re-
search studies supporting a variety of sensory claims
for brands (‘‘tastes great,’’ ‘‘cleaner longer,’’ ‘‘longer
lasting,’’ ‘‘new, improved flavor,’’ ‘‘preferred 2:1,’’
etc.), the content of this book was a fun, interesting
way for me to learn more about how companies apply
sensory research to create and support their brands.
At the same time, this book might seem rather
non-novel and obvious to some sensory marketing
practitioners. Of course, you need to create great-
tasting products and pleasant aromas, congruent
visual appeal, and nice touch and (where appropri-
ate) optimize (or minimize) sound effects. We’ve been
practicing our sensory discipline in industry on a wide
BOOK REVIEWS
variety of products and services now for many years.
However, this book speaks to more—it’s about leve-
raging the ‘‘sense experiences’’ holistically and syner-
gistically to create the ‘‘brand soul.’’ And this book
speaks to marketers—about the senses. At last, we
(the sensory research community) have arrived; now
there is a book for marketers about the senses written
by business professionals outside our domain. We
participate in many diversified professional organiza-
tions or conferences—American Society of Testing
and Materials (ASTM International), Institute of
Food Technologists (IFT), Sensometrics, Society of
Sensory Professionals (SSP), Association for Chemo-
reception Sciences (ACHEMS), The Pangborn Sen-
sory Science Symposium, to name a few—and you
will even find us on occasion at marketing (AMA) and
innovation (PDMA) conferences. We (sensory pro-
fessionals) are an eclectic crowd of 1000 þ specialized
global researchers with diverse interests and formal
training in a wide variety of fields such as food sci-
ence, psychology, statistics, and yes even business and
marketing research. Our toolbox of qualitative and
quantitative methods is applied across most every
product and service on the market. I invite my sen-
sory research colleagues to read then share this book
with their marketers. Marketers call upon the sensory
scientific community to help deliver the crucial ‘‘ulti-
mate/supreme sensory experience’’ for their brands.
This book codifies for companies the evolution from
thinking of brands in terms of just attributes and fea-
tures to regarding them as sensory experiences, thereby
creating the symbiosis between brand and individual via
synthesis of the human senses to express the ‘‘brand
soul.’’ Practicing and mastering the forward-reaching
concepts in this book will surely lead to better under-
standing of humans and human nature and more inte-
grated, efficient, and effective research and brand
management practices. Companies that plan for and
adopt comprehensive sensory marketing strategies in-
volving the five human senses challenge both their mar-
keting and research and development divisions to think
and work at a higher level, and are poised to create a
competitive advantage in their markets.
References
Ackerman, D. 1995. The natural history of love. New York: Random
House.
Lindstrom, M. 2005. Brand sense: Build powerful brands through touch,
taste, smell, sight, and sound. New York: Free Press.
Schmitt, B. 1999. Experiential marketing: How to get customers to
sense, feel, think, act, relate. New York: Free Press.
BOOK REVIEWS
Zaltman, G. 2003. How customers think: Essential insights into the mind
of the market. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Carla Kuesten
Amway
Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creat-
ing Products that Customers Love
Roman Pichler. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2010.
xxv þ 133 pages. US$34.99.
Agile Product Management with Scrum details how
product management works in an agile context.
Throughout the book, Roman Pichler’s treatment is
laconic and authoritative. The book is intended for
those interested in the role of the product owner. The
author assumes that readers already have product
management knowledge and are familiar with Scrum.
In one concise table, Pichler contrasts Scrum-based
agile product management with what he characterizes
as ‘‘old school’’ approaches (pp. xx–xxi). One ap-
proach embraces a process where requirements
emerge. The other approach attempts to define de-
tailed requirements early in the development process.
Often Pichler provides a context-specific definition
followed by a suggestion. For example: ‘‘A product
road map is a planning artifact that shows how the
product is likely to evolve across product versions,
facilitating a dialogue between the Scrum team and
the stakeholders. . . . I recommend keeping product
road maps simple and focused on the essentials’’
(p. 41). Sometimes the examples are more concise,
such as ‘‘feature soup . . . Avoid this antipattern’’
(p. 43).
The role of the product owner within a Scrum
framework is the focus of Chapter 1. Jeff Sutherland,
who is credited as a co-creator of Scrum, defines a
product owner as one who is ‘‘embedded in the mar-
ket and embedded in the team at the same time’’ in a
total immersion experience (p. xvi). The product
J PROD INNOV MANAG 615
2011;28:611–615
owner is primus inter pares, first among peers. As
both leader and team player, they create cohesion and
alignment from the product concept to the launch.
Pichler states that the roles of product owner and
ScrumMaster are designed to complement each other.
He declares that on a Scrum team, the project man-
ager role is redundant because the team identifies, es-
timates, and manages the tasks.
Most of the chapters contain an explicit ‘‘common
mistakes’’ segment. These include:
- Underpowered and overworked product owners
(Chapter 1)
- Analysis paralysis (Chapter 2)
- Competing backlogs (Chapter 3)
- Quality compromises (Chapter 4)
- Unsustainable pace (Chapter 5)
The Chapter 3 treatment of operational require-
ments (which are also known as nonfunctional re-
quirements) includes their impact on the definition of
‘‘done’’ and their description as project constraints.
Chapter 5 examines how to make the best team
even better. Interspersed with the description of com-
mon Scrum practices (such as sprint backlogs, burn
downs, and retrospectives) are insights on improving
collaboration.
Chapter 6, ‘‘Transitioning into the Product Owner
Role,’’ includes segments on ‘‘becoming a great prod-
uct owner’’ and ‘‘developing great product owners.’’
Table 6.1, ‘‘Product Owner Do’s and Don’ts,’’ in-
cludes the recommendation to ‘‘incorporate change
between sprints’’ and to not ‘‘allow change to creep
into sprints’’ (p. 112).
Pichler’s empirical insights are best suited to accel-
erate learning that places customers at the center of
development efforts. He asserts that ‘‘applying the
product owner role effectively is not only the corner-
stone of making agile product management work. It is
also a learning process for individuals playing the role
and for the organization’’ (p. 118).
Mark A. Hart, NPDP
OpLaunch