The use of consumer neuroscience in aroma marketing

Abstract

brain and help in deciding on the next purchase. In this way, the senses evoke emotions or feelings that indirectly decide on the selection or purchase of the product (Srivastava and Singh, 2011).The impact of sensory marketing on the senses can be subtle, which is why consumers do not perceive them as a marketing message and do not react with the usual resistance as in the case of advertising and similar promotions. For example, Hershey's has long realised that the pleasure that people get when unwrapping the chocolate turns an ordinary sweet into a special experience. Another example is Olay Regenerist thermal skin products, designed to generate heat when applied (in spite of the fact that heat is not needed for them to be working), signalling in such a way that they are actually working. Car manufacturers have also not neglected the senses, and the 2014 BMW M5 emitted and amplified the engine sounds through the car's sound system, even when the system was switched off. The goal was to improve the sporty feel of this car (HBR, 2015).The main goal of sensory marketing is therefore to use the consumer sensory perception, in order to evoke a positive experience with the emotional connection to selected factors, such as the point of sale, brand, product, or service (Nadányiová, 2017). Marketers are trying to use various information encoded by all senses to communicate with their potential target customers (Nghiêm-Phú, 2017).Senses can be understood as physical means that allow to see, smell, hear, taste, and touch. For all living beings, information is gathered about the outside world as well as inside within their body through their senses, so these become extremely important. Our five main sense organs include the eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and skin (Srivastava and Singh, 2011).According to Hussain (2019), we recognise the following elements of sensory marketing based on human senses: ▶ the sense of sight -visual marketing; ▶ the sense of hearing -auditory marketing; ▶ the sense of smell -olfactory marketing; ▶ the sense of touch -tactile marketing; ▶ the sense of taste -gustative marketing.Visual marketing is focused on the use of sight in marketing. Sight is still quite often considered the most important sense in marketing communication. Consumer perception is greatly influenced by general shapes, colours, design, lighting, or aesthetics, especially in the case of specific visual aspects (Kuczamer-Kłopotowska, 2017). Neuroscientists claim that