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Introduction
In the current marketing and management literature, a service logic emphasizes customers as co-producers of service processes ([18] Eiglier and Langeard, 1976; [27] Grönroos, 1982) and creators of value for themselves, according to the value-in-use notion ([74] Woodruff and Gardial, 1996; [50] Normann, 2001; [71] Vargo and Lusch, 2004). Among researchers, services are also seen as a form of value creation and not merely as an activity ([17] Edvardsson et al. , 2005). Moreover, a service logic is based on the notion that customers use all types of resources, including goods and services, as services give them value and service processes are of an interactive character in supporting value-generating processes ([31] Grönroos and Ravald, 2009).
In pursuing a service perspective, firms should be seen as value facilitators, providing different kinds of resources to customer consumption, and value-generating processes. It has been suggested that a firm should use its interactions with customers in influencing the value creation processes ([29] Grönroos, 2006). In these processes, different interactions impact on the nature and types of value that customers perceive in terms of interactive, relativistic, preferential, or experience values, as well as self-oriented or other-oriented values ([38] Holbrook, 1999). Furthermore, in terms of service logic, a firm should support customers in their daily activities and processes by providing goods, services, hidden services, information, and so on, as long as this generates value to customers ([30] Grönroos, 2008).
In this study, it is assumed that the value of service, as a brand image, emerges when interactions occur through the customer's sensory experiences in the value-generating processes. This image is based on how customers perceive and experience service and the process in reality. The customer's feelings and thoughts about the service, including both goods- and service components, as well as other elements, contribute to an image in the customer's mind that is synonymous with the brand ([30] Grönroos, 2008). This is in accordance with the notion of experiential marketing from [37] Holbrook and Hirschmann (1982) and [68] Schmitt (1999), in which contexts, aesthetics, emotions, and symbolic aspects of customer experiences are significant.
The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the multi-sensory brand-experience concept in relation to the human mind and senses - smell, sound, sight, taste, and...