In today's highly competitive era, it is becoming increasingly difficult for businesses to attract and keep customers. Modern marketing strategies focused on examining customer behavior, and possibilities of the business sector in influencing them are becoming increasingly beneficial. Consumer neuroscience has great potential here, as it reveals internal consumer preferences by using innovative techniques. Human senses play an important role in affecting these preferences, and smell has the greatest potential to influence customers subconsciously, and thus support the sale of products, keep customers in the store longer, or build a brand. Aroma marketing is the continuously developing field of consumer neuroscience. The paper aims to examine the use of consumer neuroscience in aroma marketing of a service company. After theoretical analysis, we carried out practical research aimed at examining the impact of aroma marketing in a selected service company – Sport Café in Nitra – to increase the sales of a particular product, and its real impact on the economic indicators of this company through the use of consumer neuroscience tools and questionnaire survey. In aromatization, choosing the right aroma is of the utmost importance, therefore in our research, this selection was done in the Laboratory of Consumer Studies at the Faculty of Economics and Management, SUA in Nitra. The research was carried out through conscious and unconscious testing of selected aromas by a randomly chosen sample of customers. Conscious testing included using a questionnaire method and unconscious testing was done using a face-reading device that provides an objective assessment of emotions based on facial expressions. The choice of aroma was followed by testing in real conditions, by diffusing the aroma in the café. Based on the collected data, we confirmed the positive impact of aromatization on coffee sales. In conclusion, we present some recommendations for service companies, focused mainly on cafés, with emphasis on the importance of aromatization for attracting and keeping customers and improving profitability.

Consumer neuroscience is a phenomenon that has become an important tool of marketing management when defining customer driven strategies. The aim of consumer neuroscience (neuromarketing research) is a better understanding of the principles of decision IntroductionIn the process of the adjustment of the retail environment, formed by important components which influence consumers, perception plays a significant role supported by all five sensory organs. A prerequisite of adequate buying behavior is the detection of customer senses perception and an adaptation of visual merchandising in the retail environment. Consumers when buying products seek to meet their own needs, which companies are trying to follow up with creating proper conditions in the sales area. Among the features needed first to attract attention and then to select a product, is the position of the product on the shelf, the impact of music, colors, lighting and scents that directly affect the consumer emotions. Natural perception of music causes emotional response in humans, resulting from stimulations transmitted to the central nervous system. These perceptions influence consumer behavior to varying degree, as individuals evaluate heard musical formula from their subjective point of view. Among the standard marketing research methods also new methods are coming to the fore, aimed at monitoring neurological and biometric data, as are consumer neuroscience or neuromarketing. Conscious customer perception is important, but mostly it does not reflect real behavior. Given this fact, companies are increasingly applying neuroimaging and biometric techniques to survey the unconscious components of consumer perception. They help to uncover hidden customer reactions and identify relations between internal emotions and external consumer manifestation and buying behavior. Detailed mapping of consumer behavior and responses gains importance in recent years as a result of global economic problems and financial recession, when consumers reassess the volume and financial costs of their purchases more than ever.

In the current era of a strongly competitive business environment, it is more difficult for companies to attract customers. Consumer neuroscience has growing potential here, as it reveals internal consumer preferences by using innovative methods and tools, which can effectively examine consumer behavior and attract new customers. In particular, smell has a great ability to subconsciously influence customers and, thus, support profitability. This paper examines the importance of consumer neuroscience and its modern technologies used for exploring human perceptions to influence customers and benefit from the aromatization of business spaces. We focused our analysis on various service sectors. Despite the potential of the examined issue, there are a limited number of studies in the field of service providers that use neuroscience tools to examine the effect of aromas on human emotions. Most studies took place in laboratory conditions, and the used methodological procedures varied widely. Our analysis showed that, in spite of the positive impact of aromatization in the majority of aromatized spaces, service companies still do not use the potential of consumer neuroscience and aroma marketing to a sufficient degree. Innovative methods and tools, in particular, are still very underused.

Building a unique USP sales argument (unique selling proposition) through various forms of in-store communication comes to the fore in a challenging competitive environment. Scent as a means to influence the purchase of goods or services has a long history, however, aromachology as field of in-store communication is a matter of the present. This new trend, the importance and use of which has grown in recent years, is the subject of a wide range of research. In order to increase the efficiency of these elements, it is necessary to familiarise ourselves with the factors that affect the customer, whether that be consciously or unconsciously. Consumer neuroscience is addressed in this area. This paper deals with the comprehensive interdisciplinary investigation of the impact of selected aromatic compounds on consumer cognitive and affective processes as well as assessing the effectiveness of their implementation in food retail operations. At the end of the paper, we recommend options for the effective selection and implementation of aromatisation of different premises, by which the retailer can achieve not only a successful form of in-store communication, but also an increase the retail turnover of the store.

The goal of this chapter is to analyze the socio-economic role of value-added agriculture (VAA) for Central Asian (CA) countries. The agricultural sector of the region provides raw materials for the food, textile, and leather industry. Cotton, wheat, rice, and fruit (fresh and dried) play an important role in the foreign trade of each CA country. These countries have unrealized potential for storing, freezing, processing, and packaging of the wide nomenclature of fruit, food production, and drinks with the organization of their further exports to perspective markets. Adding value to agricultural products lead to increasing the share of finished goods in export, supplying import-substituting products, improving infrastructure in rural areas, providing new jobs, and growing farmers' income. Based on the analysis, the authors recommend using value-added agriculture for the CA countries by attracting domestic and foreign investments to rural areas, establishing tax incentives, and allocating preferential credits for agribusiness.