This book has its origins in our shared interest in sensory marketing.
It began in June 2006 with an idea for a research project at the Baltic
Business School (BBS) at Kalmar University, Sweden. It was obvious
to us that most marketers had long overlooked the signifi cance of the
human senses in marketing, especially how different sense expressions
such as scent, music, design, taste, and texture can help clarify
the identity of a fi rm or a brand.
Such sense expressions in marketing can be critical to an individual’s
sensory experience of a brand or a service landscape, where by
“service landscape” we mean the physical and virtual places in which
a fi rm or brand is highlighted to create an image. We noticed that
more and more fi rms had a growing interest in the signifi cance of the
human senses in marketing, not just in terms of the sight sense often
expressed through advertising and TV commercials.
Of course, different sense expressions contribute to the image or
mental conception an individual creates about a fi rm or a brand. Thus,
we were curious to fi nd out more about the role of the fi ve human
senses and to further explore sensory marketing in practice.
At the same time, it was obvious that sensory marketing was sparsely
treated in national and international research and literature. This
amazed us, because the fi ve human senses – smell, sound, sight, taste,
and touch – should in our opinion underlie the purchase and consumption
experiences a fi rm creates through its marketing strategy
and tactics. Primarily for this reason, we realized the need to develop
new marketing knowledge.