Sensory Inclusion in the Marketplace: Addressing Overload as an Emerging Axis of Exclusion

What we are now talking about is, in fact, a political issue: using the built environment to enhance wellbeing across classes, ethnicities, and lifetimes.

—Sarah Williams Goldhagen (Venetian Letter 2021)

Marketing scholarship and public policy have prioritized inclusion across, for instance, income, race, gender, age, and disability. Yet these efforts presume that removing physical or informational barriers enables equal participation in the marketplace, overlooking a foundational constraint: the sensory accessibility of consumption environments themselves. Contemporary markets use atmospheric cues to help shape consumer behavior (Spence et al. 2014), while digital platforms compete through vivid interfaces, and service providers orchestrate multisensory brand experiences (Petit, Velasco, and Spence 2019). While such strategies can enhance engagement, they introduce a threshold problem. When sensory intensity, complexity, or incongruence exceeds individual processing capacity, environments shift from stimulating to excluding, thus creating fundamental barriers to participation in the marketplace. This is not marginal: Neurominorities may represent 15%–20% of the population (Doyle 2020), while age-related sensory impairment among older adults further increases the share of consumers whose sensory experiences may differ from typical marketplace expectations (Cavazzana et al. 2018), making sensory inclusion a cross-cutting market concern rather than merely a niche accommodation.

Sensory inclusion thus represents a dimension that cross-cuts market design, affecting who can shop where, for how long, and under what conditions. Unlike socioeconomic barriers that are addressable through pricing or digital barriers that are responsive to interface redesign, sensory barriers require rethinking the perceptual architecture of marketplace environments, making sensory accessibility foundational for genuinely inclusive markets. Sensory overload occurs when cumulative sensory intensity, complexity, or incongruence exceeds an individual's processing capacity (Malhotra 1984; Scheydt et al. 2017). Unlike cognitive load or arousal, overload reflects breached perceptual regulation rather than heightened activation per se (Krishna 2012). Notably, the concept of sensory overload itself may be better understood as situational and relative rather than absolute, given that what constitutes “too much” can vary across individuals (Velasco and Obrist 2025).

Sensory Overload as an Emergent Axis of Exclusion

Across market systems, sensory exclusion recurs through a limited set of environmental configurations. These are most visible in physical retail spaces, digital platforms, and hybrid or semipublic environments, where cumulative sensory load is rarely calibrated to heterogeneous perceptual thresholds. While all consumers have limits, certain populations face systematically lower thresholds: Neurodivergent individuals frequently report that typical retail environments constitute “sensory minefields” (Howe 2021), older adults may struggle to filter competing inputs (Doets and Kremer 2016), and individuals with heightened sensory-processing sensitivity experience environments as more intense than their neurotypical peers (Aron and Aron 1997; Greven et al. 2025).

Conceptualizing sensory load as a continuum rather than as a dichotomy may thus be an important way forward. Overload marks only one tipping point; consumers may also experience underload, optimal load, or modality-specific saturation. Moreover, overload may operate as a latent construct: Disruptions in attention, choice quality, and autonomic regulation can occur even when individuals do not consciously report overstimulation. The continuous and often preconscious nature of sensory load implies that everyday variations in environmental stimulation can meaningfully contour customer experience, shaping how consumers feel, interpret, and interact with the marketplace.

When clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch combined loud music, strong fragrances, and dramatic lighting in its retail stores, many consumers experienced the space as feeling like a nightclub rather than a shop (Elliott 2014), and the sensory onslaught was subsequently toned down. In restaurants, noise levels often exceed 80–90 decibels, prompting complaints that now dominate many dining surveys (Sand, Shapiro, and Neff 2024). Retailers have begun to respond, including Walmart's sensory-friendly shopping hours (Taffi 2025), Aldi's quieter scanner beeps and reduced announcements (Calnan 2023), and Lush's low-scent hours and noise-canceling accessories at pilot stores (Colvin 2025). Exclusionary effects extend beyond physical retail: Beauty filters on Instagram and TikTok can generate visually saturated and perceptually fatiguing imagery (Hunter 2023), while London's proposed MSG Sphere development was rejected partly due to concerns about light intrusion (Mann 2023). Together, these examples point to an emerging axis of marketplace inequality, where environmental design privileges certain perceptual profiles and constrains participation for others.

Theoretical mechanisms underpinning these outcomes have been proposed. Scheydt et al. (2017) describe overload as arising when coping and filtering mechanisms become ineffective, producing impaired attention, perceptual distortions, and psychological distress. Complementary neurocognitive accounts highlight the balance between bottom-up sensory input and top-down modulation that supports the regulation of incoming stimulation (Ma et al. 2021). Individual differences further complicate exclusion, with lower sensory thresholds associated with earlier overload and higher thresholds linked to pursuit of high-intensity environments (Dunn 2007; Zuckerman et al. 1972). Research on multisensory processing further suggests that overload likelihood depends not only on intensity but also on informational relationships between the senses. Congruent audiovisual or visuotactile cues are processed more efficiently, whereas discrepant or nonredundant inputs impose additional integrative demands, lowering thresholds for overload and disproportionately excluding individuals with reduced filtering capacity (Spence 2021).

Risks of Sensory Exclusion Across Market Systems

For consumers, sensory exclusion compromises autonomy and welfare. When individuals avoid stores, abandon shopping trips, or experience anxiety in consumption environments, they face restricted choice, increased time costs, and diminished quality of life.

For brands, sensory exclusion presents strategic risks. For example, Asda employees petitioned their bosses to end “mentally draining” in-store playlists, and former Marks & Spencer investors complained publicly about “screeching divas singing at me” at their annual meetings, illustrating how overstimulation erodes brand relationships across stakeholder groups (Onita 2025). Further, the recent proliferation of portable music devices (often with noise-cancelling technology) allows consumers to mask unwanted sound and withdraw attention from their surroundings on demand (Bull 2015). This not only negates what they deem excessive but also occupies their perceptual and attentional resources to such an extent that it virtually nullifies brands’ atmospherics.

At the system level, sensory exclusion creates accessibility deserts. Just as food or banking deserts limit options geographically, sensory deserts limit options perceptually. When mainstream retailers default to high-intensity atmospherics, consumers with heightened sensitivity face systematic disadvantage. This is problematic, given that sensory-friendly hours are limited, not all retailers offer them, and they may not align with consumer schedules.

The distribution of accessible environments is uneven. Premium retailers increasingly offer sensory accommodations, such as Radisson Blu Sligo's controlled lighting and calming scents, ¹ Karisma Hotels’ autism-friendly programming, ² and San Francisco International Airport's sensory rooms. ³ While commendable, these examples reveal sensory inclusion as a luxury good rather than market standard. Mass-market environments, where most consumption occurs, lag in adoption, effectively concentrating sensory accessibility among those with resources to access premium offerings.

Advancing Actionable Insights for Policy and Practice

Policy frameworks must reconceptualize sensory regulation as a public good. Current accessibility standards focus primarily on mobility, vision, and hearing impairments. Expanding these to include sensory overload would require discussing contexts and maximum intensity levels, mandating modulation capabilities, and certifying sensory-friendly environments. Regulatory models exist: Just as occupational health standards limit workplace noise exposure, marketplace standards could limit consumer sensory exposure. British trains’ longstanding “quiet carriages” (Moran 2011) and Norway's Flytoget silent train cabins demonstrate feasible precedents. While e-commerce provides alternatives for some, physical retail spaces remain essential for tactile evaluation, immediate acquisition, and social participation, making their accessibility a continuing necessity rather than an obsolescing concern. Indeed, competitive pressure from online alternatives may incentivize brick-and-mortar stores to differentiate through superior sensory environments, transforming accessibility from regulatory burden into market advantage.

One concrete implementation pathway is a voluntary sensory accessibility certification paired with minimum baseline standards for public-facing environments. Regulators would specify upper limits for sound intensity, lighting levels, and dynamic visual stimulation in contexts such as large-format retail, transport hubs, and entertainment venues, while certification would recognize environments that exceed these minima through built-in sensory modulation or user control. For practice, this pathway implies four actions: (1) conducting sensory audits of cumulative load, (2) designing environments with modulating rather than fixed intensity baselines, (3) including spatial sensory gradients that allow consumers to adjust exposure by moving closer to or farther from sources of stimulation, and (4) training frontline staff to recognize sensory distress as an accessibility issue. Digital platforms should similarly enable user-controlled sensory intensity, while service providers proactively offer accommodation options. Critically, sensory inclusion must shift from reactive to anticipatory. “Quiet hours” represent progress but position sensory accessibility as the exception rather than norm. Proactive inclusion means designing environments that accommodate diverse thresholds, providing real-time sensory load indicators, enabling user control over environmental parameters, and conducting inclusive testing with diverse sensory profiles.

Conclusion: Toward Markets That Stimulate Without Excluding

Sensory inclusion is not about eliminating stimulation but calibrating it thoughtfully. Markets can and should engage consumers through multisensory design. However, when intensity, complexity, or incongruence escalates without regard for diverse processing capacities, engagement may become exclusion. This is not to suggest that reduced stimulation is inherently special or compensatory, but rather that in markets calibrated to chronically high sensory baselines, temporary or spatial reductions in lighting, sound, or visual density can function as an augmentation for some consumers, with potential commercial benefits rather than experiential loss. Recognizing sensory accessibility as fundamental to market inclusion requires acknowledging that sensory and perceptual thresholds vary systematically, that these variations are diversities requiring accommodation, and that designing for breadth of access enhances rather than constrains commercial viability.

The evidence is mounting that consumers vote with their feet, and some appear to be leaving brick-and-mortar shopping establishments, though systematic data on sensory-driven market exit remains limited. Brands that recognize this earliest will help define this emerging competitive landscape. Policymakers who act will expand market participation. Reclaiming marketplace inclusion means acknowledging that markets exclude not only through price, location, or information but also through sensory design. Addressing this emerging axis of inequality is both an ethical obligation and a strategic opportunity to redefine what inclusive markets mean and whom they serve.