Should you consider intertwining Aesthetic Sensory with Consumer Experience ?

The concept of experience holds a central place both in philosophy of art and in contemporary marketing. In aesthetics, experience has been examined as the foundation of art’s value, meaning, and cultural role. In marketing, scholars such as Schmitt and Zarantonello highlight the dual nature of experience: immediate sensory engagement and accumulated, memory-based reflection. By exploring these two dimensions together, it becomes possible to rethink aesthetic experience not as a fading philosophical concept but as a living, evolving phenomenon that continues to inform art, consumer culture, and everyday life.

Discussion

Philosophers have long debated the status and significance of aesthetic experience. Robert Shusterman, for instance, describes it as an “island of freedom, beauty, and idealistic meaning” in a materialistic world—an encounter that could provide transcendence and spiritual renewal. Earlier thinkers such as Hume and Kant also located aesthetics in subjective perception: beauty was not in the object itself but in the contemplative mind, while judgments of taste were grounded in the subject’s feelings of pleasure or displeasure. This tradition emphasized the immediacy of sensory experience, the direct moment of contact with art, nature, or beauty.

Yet aesthetic experience is not limited to these instantaneous perceptions. Just as consumer research demonstrates that experience is both immediate and memory-based, aesthetic experience also unfolds across time. The encounter with a painting, a concert, or even a natural landscape does not end with the sensory moment. It lingers, shapes memory, and becomes part of a personal and collective narrative. These memories influence how future experiences are interpreted and valued. In this sense, the dual nature of experience bridges marketing insights with philosophical inquiry: art and consumption alike are structured by both the “here and now” and the enduring recollection that gives meaning to those moments.

Sociological perspectives, such as those advanced by Bourdieu, further emphasize that aesthetic experience is socially shaped, developing through cultural institutions and learned habits. This echoes marketing’s understanding that brand or product experiences are embedded in social, cultural, and historical contexts. To reduce aesthetic experience solely to fine art, or consumer experience solely to market transactions, is to impoverish their meanings. Both domains expand beyond their immediate objects, extending into broader life contexts: nature, everyday practices, and the arts of living, as John Dewey envisioned.

Conclusion

By reframing aesthetic experience through the dual lens of immediacy and memory, we can recover its vitality and relevance. Experience is neither a fleeting sensory event nor merely a cognitive recollection; it is both at once, dynamically shaped by individual perception and cultural context. This perspective allows us to see continuities between art and marketing, philosophy and consumption, beauty and brand. Just as Dewey urged a democratization of art through the manifold arts of living, experiential marketing demonstrates that meaningful experiences can occur in diverse, everyday encounters. Far from being obsolete, the concept of aesthetic experience—understood in its dual nature—remains a powerful way to understand how humans find value, meaning, and transcendence in both art and life.