Σκοπός της παρούσας έρευνας είναι να μελετήσει πως τα αισθητηριακά ερεθίσματα επηρεάζουν την αντίληψη της ποιότητας μιας καλλυντικής κρέμας προσώπου, την ικανοποίηση, την πίστη και τα συναισθήματα που αναπτύσσει ο καταναλωτής απέναντι στην κρέμα. Πλέον οι καταναλωτές θεωρούν δεδομένα τα λειτουργικά χαρακτηριστικά των προϊόντων και αποζητούν το συναισθηματικό δέσιμο με το προϊόν. Ο σκοπός του μάρκετινγκ των αισθήσεων (sensory marketing) είναι να ενισχύσει το συναισθηματικό δέσιμο των καταναλωτών με τα προϊόντα μέσω της χρήσης των πέντε βασικών αισθήσεων. Δεν έχουν πραγματοποιηθεί ακόμα πολλές έρευνες πάνω στο μάρκετινγκ των αισθήσεων και στο πως επηρεάζει την αντίληψη των καταναλωτών για το προϊόν. Το θεωρητικό εννοιολογικό πλαίσιο της συγκεκριμένης έρευνας προέκυψε από τη συγχώνευση του συμπεριφοριστικού μοντέλου S-O-R (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974) και του εννοιολογικού μοντέλου για το μάρκετινγκ των αισθήσεων της Krishna (2011). Το εργαλείο με το οποίο μελετήθηκε η επίδραση των αισθητηριακών ερεθισμάτων στην αντίληψη της ποιότητας της καλλυντικής κρέμας ήταν ένα ερωτηματολόγιο που μοιράστηκε σε 9 φαρμακεία της Θεσσαλονίκης και συμπληρώθηκε από 154 άτομα. Μέσα από την ανάλυση παραγόντων (factor analysis) προέκυψαν 11 καταναλωτικά προφίλ. Τα ερευνητικά συμπεράσματα υποδεικνύουν πως τα αισθητηριακά ερεθίσματα επηρεάζουν την αντιλαμβανόμενη ποιότητα θετικά, οδηγώντας σε ένα ισχυρό (συναισθηματικό και λογικό) δέσιμο του καταναλωτή με την κρέμα που έχει επιλέξει. / The purpose of this study is to explore how sensory stimuli influence emotions associated, perceived quality, satisfaction and loyalty towards a face cream brand. Nowadays consumers believe that the functional attributes of products are granted and look for an emotional attachment with each product. The aim of sensory marketing is to reinforce the attachment between a product and its consumers, through the involvement of human senses. Sensory marketing is yet a new practice, thus the number of studies concerning its effect on brand perception are limited. Two conceptual frameworks, the stimulus-organism-response (S.O.R.) behavioral framework (Mehrabian and Russell, 1974) and the conceptual framework of sensory marketing, (Krishna, 2011), were merged and elaborated to construct the research model of this study. The use of sensory marketing at this study was explored by administrating an anonymous self-completed questionnaire, which was distributed to 154 face cream buyers, within 9 pharmacy stores across Thessaloniki, Greece. For the purposes of the study, an exploratory principal component analysis was conducted. The factor solution identified 11 factors. All factors were labeled, interpreted and discussed in the light of existing knowledge in order to understand better the consumer behavior in relation to sensory stimuli. The findings indicate that sensory stimuli influence brand perception positively leading to a stronger (rational and emotional) bond between the brand and the consumer.

This research explores the sensory marketing and more specifically the effect of the senses on consumers experience in the clothing distribution sector. The purpose of this paper is to understand if all the senses have an effect on the customer experience in clothing stores. To do this a primary quantitative data has been collected through a questionnaire from clothing store customers to assess the effect of different senses on their consumer experiences. The results obtained by the analyzing of the questionnaire through regression analysis concluded that there are two senses that really stand out of the lot, firstly the smell then secondly the sight.

Syfte & forskningsfrågor: Syftet med studien är att klargöra på vilka sätt hotell kan tillämpa sinnesorienterad marknadsföring i sin lobby för att förbättra sina gästers upplevelse och därmed stärka sin position på marknaden. Med syftet som bakgrund formulerades två forskningsfrågor: • Vilken betydelse har ett första intryck i en lobby och hur kan det påverkas av sinnesorienterad marknadsföring? • Hur kan en mer positiv kundupplevelse i lobbyn, via sinnesorienterad marknadsföring, vara stärkande för ett hotells varumärke? Metod: Studien är grundad i en kvalitativ forskningsmetod för att uppnå en djupare förståelse för ämnet. Forskningsansatsen började med deduktiva inslag för att sedan övergå till induktiv vid insamling av empiriskt material. Det empiriska materialet utgörs av åtta semistrukturerade intervjuer. Slutsatser: Resultatet i studien visar att ett första intryck av en hotellvistelse skapas i lobbyn. Därför har vi kommit fram till att det är viktigt att påverka gästens upplevelse i en positiv riktning i ett så tidigt skede som möjligt, då det första intrycket kommer prägla resten av vistelsen. För att kunna göra det är vår slutsats att hotell bör utforma en strategi för sinnesorienterad marknadsföring i sin lobby, för att förbättra gästens upplevelse och sin position på marknaden. / Purpose and research questions: The purpose of this study is to clarify how hotels can apply sensory marketing in their lobby to enhance their guest’s experience and thereby strengthen their position on the market. With the purpose as a background we formed two research questions: • What significance has a first impression in a lobby and how can it be influenced by sensory marketing? • How can a more positive customer experience in the lobby, through sensory marketing, be strengthening for a hotel brand? Method: The study is established in a qualitative research method to achieve a deeper understanding of the subject. The study is in the beginning based on a deductive character and are changing into a inductive character in the collecting of empirical material. The empirical material is collected from eight semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: The results of our study shows that a first impression of a stay at a hotel is created in the lobby. Therefor, we have come to the conclusion that it is important to affect the customer experience in a positive direction as early as possible, since the first impression will characterize the rest of the stay. In order to do that, our conclusion is that hotels need to implement a strategy of sensory marketing in the lobby, to enhance the guest experience and thereby their position on the market.

Abstract Purpose and research question The purpose of the study is to clarify the role and significance of mind marketing in hotel rooms to strengthen the hotel brand. What does sense marketing mean today in hotel rooms? In what way can sense of mind in hotel rooms influence the brand identity? Method The essay is written in a qualitative research method with abductive elements. The empirical material consists of six semistructured interviews with eight respondents. Conclusion The study results show that the hotel room has an influence on the hotel brand. The hotel is an organization with several sectors and, in the experience of the guest, each sector is tasked with sending an emotional message. Sensory marketing is implemented in hotel rooms for an effective method used to convey a message and to create experiences. The hotel industry wants to offer a service that makes the guests happy and create positive memories. It is the clearest method of differentiating from other hotels which has an influence over the brand. Keywords Sensory marketing, Brand, Image, Identity, Service landscape, Hotel, Hotel room

As sensory marketing is becoming a more widely used strategy in the world, the need to distinguish oneself is more important than ever. The general knowledge of sensory cues, their interplay and sensory overload among Swedish retail beauty companies is researched in this thesis. We set out to identify the baseline knowledge of the store personnel and the implications thereof in Sweden on the subjects formerly mentioned.       This investigative study aims to provide an insight into the workings and knowledge gap of retail store design from the perspective of store personnel with sensory- marketing, interplay and congruency in mind with focus on the senses vision, audio and scent. The knowledge of these are assumed to influence a stores’ ability to cater to and adapt to everyday and sensory-sensitive consumers. The study also aims to provide an insight into the subject of sensory overload, what causes it and the effects that might be had from the experience.    To achieve this, we formed the research questions: “How do beauty retail stores in Sweden keep sensorial interplay in mind when designing their retail setting?” and “How do beauty retail stores in Sweden take sensory overload into consideration?”. We performed qualitative interviews with Swedish retail beauty stores’ employees. A foundational knowledge was established in the form of a literature review followed by empirical findings, to be discussed in the analysis.   The conclusions drawn from our research, were that there is awareness among managers on sensory marketing. However, sensory cues are commonly broken down and compartmentalized into singular events. While we found that there are congruence considerations taken as to how the cues relate to the stores’ brand, there seemed to be little to none taken to how the cues interplay with each other. We could also conclude that sensory overload is not a consideration. However, that there are various reasons to this, one major being that Swedish retailers are careful about the implementation of sensory experiences and therefore consider themselves safe from the possibility.

Previous research shows that new strategies are currently needed to reach consumers on an emotional level. Theories claim that sensory marketing is the most effective method for companies to achieve customer loyalty and profitability. The five senses have proven to be useful in hotels, but there are a few studies that explain how these sensory strategies can be applied in real cases. The purpose of this essay is thus to gain a better understanding of how hotels with the help of sensory marketing can create a valuable encounter.  The empirical material is based on nine interviews with various hotels in Kalmar County where the respondents were asked to answer thirteen questions that include sensory marketing, service management and brand image.The results show that sensory marketing isn't a conscious strategy used by hotels. There is therefore no greater thought about how they use the senses, but more about their own intentions and what they think appeals to the consumers. One reason why hotels don't use this strategy may be due to a lack of knowledge but also other priorities of strategies. This study has been based on a company perspective where hotels have a large customer focus. There is a constant discussion about what the hotels consider is appealing to the guest, therefore the interest thus ends up in what consumers consider to be a valuable experience. A supplementary study from the consumer perspective could have confirmed the question marks that currently cannot be answered without the consumer's voice.

Sustainability has been on everyone's lips in the last decade. However, the fashion industry has been proved to be the second-largest contributor to environmental destruction being just behind the oil industry. As the fashion industry keeps growing, measures need to be taken to make it more sustainable. When shopping for fashion products the channel with the least environmental cost is using physical stores. However, physical stores are becoming less and less attractive and are losing their customers to e-commerce instead, a phenomenon that has been called the retail apocalypse. When comparing physical stores to e-commerce one clear advantage that the physical stores have is that they can take advantage of sensory cues to enhance the customer's shopping experience. This thesis wants to test if sensory touchpoints in a fashion retailing environment will affect customer decision-making. Ultimately contributing to the thin available research in the field on how to make physical retailing more attractive and counteract the ongoing retail apocalypse.  The empirical findings were obtained using a quantitative survey consisting of 32 questions sent out via social media to Swedish fashion customers and were analyzed through the theoretical concepts of evaluation of alternatives and purchase decision which are two of the steps in the customer decision-making process model. Concluding this thesis showed that all research questions surrounding sensorial touch points' impact on customers came back with positive outcomes.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine which experiential dimensions that are perceived as important for customers and how these dimensions are delivered by Swedish beauty and makeup retailers. The focus is to examine how their physical in-store environments succeeds with delivering extraordinary customer experiences. The thesis is conducted through a deductive approach and a quantitative research method have been implemented. Further on, the software Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) have been used to process the data collected from an online questionnaire. The empirical findings were then calculated into six variables that were analyses and discussed in relation to existing theories to strengthen and improve the research of customer experience. The thesis found that experiential dimensions of interaction, emotion, differentiation and in-store technologies are considered as important by customers within the age of 18-30, when creating extraordinary customer experiences in the context of beauty and makeup in-store environments. Moreover, the collected data prove that Swedish Beauty and makeup stores fails to deliver these four dimensions in the extent to create extraordinary customer experiences. Customers of today want new and interesting in-store environments, which means that retailers need to permanently elaborate their environments with unique design element within these dimensions to deliver memorable customer experiences. The result from this thesis can be used by beauty and makeup retailers and other industries to increase their delivery of extraordinary customer experience.

This doctoral dissertation investigates the impact of incidental aesthetics on consumer perceptions. The author refers to incidental aesthetics in two dimensions. One is in the aesthetic properties of product context that is not directly related to its functional performance. And second is in the aesthetic attributes found in unexpected sources defined as ordinary objects, places, and people. Drawing on theories from aesthetics, psychology, and consumer behavior, this dissertation examines in two manuscripts how and why incidental aesthetics influence consumer evaluations. The first paper, 'Welded Together: How Responses to Incidental, Nondiagnostic Sensory Context (Mis)Guide Simultaneous Product Evaluations,' studies how evaluations of incidental aesthetics from a sensory experience with nondiagnostic product contextual cues are merged with the evaluations of the target product. The second paper, 'Consumer Attentiveness to Beauty in the Ordinary,' examines an understudied dimension of beauty. The construct of attentiveness to beauty in the ordinary is defined as the degree to which individuals mindfully identify and formulate an aesthetic judgment of common visual elements and integrate this mindset into their daily experiences. The authors develop a four-item Attentiveness to Beauty in the Ordinary Scale to measure the construct. Using a mixed-methods approach, combining a series of laboratory experiments and field studies from a diverse sample of consumers (Npaper1 = 49,435; Npaper2 = 2,051), the authors show in the first paper that unappealing (appealing) incidental sensory experiences lead to lower (higher) product evaluations, including perceived quality and purchase intention. The effect emerges when the incidental evaluation pertains to a dimension closely related to the product dimension being evaluated. In the second paper, the findings provide evidence of validity and reliability of the Attentiveness to Beauty in the Ordinary Scale, situate the scale in a network of related constructs such as appreciation of beauty, engagement with beauty, dispositional awe, voluntary simplicity, materialism, mindfulness, and subjective happiness, and demonstrate the predictive value of the scale for consumer perceptions and behavior. Specifically, people high (vs. low) in ordinary beauty attentiveness are less discriminating in aesthetic evaluations of ordinary elements, find higher product quality in naturally-aesthetic packaging, are less persuaded by endorsers' attractiveness, and are more likely to buy imperfect produce. This dissertation contributes to the literature on aesthetics and sensory marketing by revealing that aesthetic experiences that are not intentionally designed or not expected but naturally occur in consumption environments have a significant impact on consumer evaluations. The results have practical implications for marketers and designers, who can leverage the power of incidental aesthetics in marketing strategies to enhance product perceptions. / Doctor of Philosophy / This dissertation explores, across two papers, how natural aesthetic qualities found in things, people, places, or in product contexts, referred to as incidental aesthetics, can influence our perceptions and evaluations of products. In the first paper, the authors find a novel effect in which consumers "merge" aesthetic evaluations of incidental product context that do not affect the functionality of the product (e.g., bad/good music on headphones) with product evaluations they make at the same time (e.g., bad/good quality headphones). This effect occurs because people spontaneously mix the evaluation of the context (e.g., music sound) with the evaluation of a closely related product attribute (e.g., sound quality). In the second paper, the authors define attentiveness to beauty in the ordinary as a disposition that some people have of being more open to finding beauty when it is not expected (i.e., incidental aesthetics) and therefore seeing beauty more frequently in everyday situations than other people. The authors create a scale to measure this individual disposition and find that 1) people with high (vs. low) attentiveness to ordinary beauty see less of a difference in the beauty of elements high and low in aesthetics, 2) find higher product quality in naturally-aesthetic packaging, 3) are less persuaded by the attractiveness of an endorser in an advertisement, and 4) are more likely to buy aesthetically imperfect produce. Adding to existing research, the findings of both papers provide new insights into the impact of incidental aesthetics in consumption settings. Surprisingly, even when aesthetic experiences are not intentionally designed or expected to be found, they can still play a significant role in shaping consumer behavior. These findings have practical implications for marketers, who should consider the incidental aesthetics of their products and contexts to create a more positive experience for consumers, leading to higher product perceptions. Overall, this research suggests that the power of aesthetics in influencing behavior extends beyond what consumers consciously perceive or expect to find.

Uppsatsens bakgrund lyfter fastighetsmäklares främsta uppgift vilket är att marknadsföra och presentera uppdragsgivarens bostad samt beakta dennes ekonomiska intresse genom att nå högsta möjliga slutpris. Flera forskare är överens om att marknadsföringsaktiviteter i dagens samhälle bör sträva efter att nå kunderna på ett djupare plan då kunder numera kan anses förvänta sig en känslobetonad upplevelse i samband med ett köp. I processen av att köpa ett hem är en känslomässig involvering ofrånkomlig. Tidigare forskning visar på hur en medveten stimulering av människans sinnen kan påverka en kunds känslor och följaktligen beteenden och uppfattningar. Sensorisk marknadsföring är den teori som ligger närmast fenomenet om ett hänsynstagande till en människas sinnen. Genomförda studier visar på goda effekter gällande en sinnesinvolvering vid marknadsföring av framför allt upplevelser och konsumtionsvaror. Hur teorin kan användas vid förmedling av bostäder finns inte tidigare presenterat. Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva på hur fastighetsmäklare involverar spekulantens sinnen under visning av förmedlingsobjekt samt huruvida det finns en medveten strategisk tanke bakom en sådan involvering. För att besvara uppsatsens syfte användes en kvalitativ forskningsmetod där tio semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes. Respondenterna var fastighetsmäklare, vissa med chefspositioner, som arbetar i Stockholmsområdet. Resultatet av insamlade data transkriberades och analyserades sedan med hjälp av kodning, varpå kategorier och teman kopplade till syftet togs fram. Analysen bidrog till en beskrivande bild av på vilket sätt och av vilken avsikt spekulantens sinnen involveras under visningen. Det kunde även presenteras ett bidrag över hur en strategisk tanke bakom en sådan involvering återfinns inom företaget eller inte. Slutsatserna som framkommit är att respondenterna utför flera typer av handlingar inför och under visning vilka kan efterliknas det som inom sensorisk marknadsföring benämns som stimuli. Handlingarna utförs i syfte att skapa en positiv känsla i bostaden och följaktligen nå ett köpbeslut. Många moment utförs även till grund av att det anses vara kutym i arbetet som fastighetsmäklare. Majoriteten av respondenterna arbetar inte efter en strategi inom företaget om en sinnesinvolvering under visning. I de fall respondenterna varit medvetna om en strategi är den förmedlad från det specifika mäklarkontoret snarare än varumärket i stort. / The background of this thesis highlights the real estate agent’s main task, which is to market and present the client’s house and take his financial interest into account by reaching the highest possible price. Several researchers agree that marketing activities in today’s society should strive to reach customers on a deeper level, as customers expect to have an emotional experience when buying a product. In the process of buying a home, it is inevitable not to get emotionally involved. Previous research shows how a conscious integration of a person’s senses can affect a customer’s feelings and consequently behaviors and perceptions. The closest thing to this phenomenon in research is the theory of sensory marketing. Previous studies have resulted in good effects regarding an involvement of the senses in the marketing of, above all, experiences, and consumer goods. In which manner the theory can be used in the real estate industry has not previously been demonstrated. The purpose of this thesis is to how real estate agents involve the customer’s senses during the viewing of a house and whether a conscious strategic idea behind such an integration exists or not. A qualitative research method has been used in which ten semi- structured interviews were conducted. The respondents were real estate agents, some with managerial positions, who work in the Stockholm area. The results of the collected data were transcribed and then analyzed by using coding as an approach. Categories and themes that could be linked to the purpose were developed. The thesis contributed to a description of in what way and for what reason the respondents integrate the senses. It could also contribute with information about how a strategic idea behind such integration exists or not. The conclusions that emerged are that the respondents perform several types of actions before and during the viewing of the house which can be said to be similar to what in sensory marketing is referred to as stimuli. The actions are performed in order to create a positive feeling in the house and consequently attract a potential buyer who hopefully makes a purchase decision. Many steps are also performed due to the fact that it is considered customary in the work as a real estate agent. The majority of the respondents do not work according to a strategic idea about a sensory involvement within the company. In cases where respondents have been aware of a strategy being communicated, the strategy is communicated from the specific office rather than from the brand as a whole.