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.