iba 2018

••• 10••• Innovationen Music, scent and colour inuence customers Multisensory experiences enhance sales and feeling of comfort in shops, restaurants and cafés T he combination of food, light- ing, colours, furniture, table setting, atmosphere, sound and environment create a multisen- sory experience that has an ef- fect on consumers’ behaviour and general feeling of comfort. Re- search results show that sounds of nature played in the fruit and vegetable section of a grocery shop had an impact on the sales. A two-year project was conducted in Finland to find out how differ- ent factors such as presentation of the food, the built environ- ment and characteristics of the space can influence customers’ experiences and choices of foods in restaurants and grocery shops. The results could be utilised for business purposes in the nutri- tion industry and in the planning of food and eating environments. The University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts) was in charge of examin- ing how music and environmental sounds could be used in super- markets and lunch restaurants. “By determining the optimal sound design for a grocery shop, we were able to influence con- sumers’ personal and social be- haviour. We assessed the prem- ises and the appliances together with the customers to see if there was something that was lack- ing or in need of improvement in terms of acoustic design,” says Heikki Uimonen from Uniarts Hel- sinki. The researchers discovered that the volume of music and the acoustic features of the space, the multisensory experience involving the space and sounds, the inter- action between the senses, and emotional experiences induced by music performances played a major role in the sound design. Similar findings were made by researchers from Alpen-Adria- Universität Klagenfurt in Austria. “People feel more pleasure and demonstrate higher purchase in- tentions in retail environments enhanced with music or scent than in settings lacking these stimuli. With regard to colour ef- fects, warm hues of orange or red emerged as activating, while cool colours like blue or violet had a positive effect on customer sat- isfaction,” says Holger Roschk. He underlines the necessity of tailor-made solutions, i.e. the stimuli must be adapted to the respective consumption environ- ment – a task for retail and ser- vice executives. “The effects are generally small to medium in size, in line with the subtle nature of the atmospheric stimuli. The use of music, scent and colour should consequently be regarded as a long-term strategy,” Roschk adds. A café and pastry shop on the Greek island of Kos Photo: Julien Christ / pixelio.de Highlights&neueProdukte Anzeige The Rinsch Mobile Mass Container - an accessory not to be missed Being designed, continuously improved and developed with customers’ needs and requirements at the heart, the mobile mass container ticks a lot of boxes in the areas of flexibility, hygienic design and food safety. The Mobile Mass Con- tainer MMW is a plug & play, multipurpose piece of kit. Its application ranges from small artisan chocolatiers, laboratory and product develop- ment work to big indus- trial production sites. The MMW is available in dif- ferent sizes, starting from 75 kg product volume up to 500 kg. The basis of the MMW is a stainless steel, double walled, water heated horizontal tank with different stirrer op- tions. The mobile unit can be used to transport product from one part of the production to an- other. The horizontal stir- rer can be easily removed for cleaning or to use an alternative stirrer design for another application. Depending on the viscos- ity of the product and the application there are dif- ferent stirrers available. Possible applications are melting smaller amounts of chocolate or fillings, cooling and conditioning of fillings, incorporation of inclusions like nuts or freeze dried fruit into plain chocolate, the addi- tion of flavouring or col- ouring into chocolate or fondants. The unit has a product pump with a heated ver- tical pipe and a swivel tel- escope extension or elec- trically heated hose which can be designed to feed the mass automati- cally into the next pro- cess step. The product can also be piped in a loop back into the MMW to support a uniform dis- tribution of flavouring and/or colouring into a chocolate mass. The chocolate stream back into the MMW allows easy removal of product at a good working height for handmade and man- ual applications. Apart from the standard fea- tures including plastic components made of blue, metal detectable material, there is a range of additional options which can be added to build an individual piece of kit. Some of the op- tions are: a melting grid and block melting frame for melding chocolate or fat blocks, a heat ex- changer unit for cooling, an inline magnetic pipe sieve, a connection point for a MasterMover unit to allow for easy and safe manoeuvring of the big- ger units. Last but not least the ease of cleaning sup- ported by its mobility and simply ways of disman- tling cannot be left un- mentioned. Chocolate Equipment Hall 6A, Stand 154 www.rinsch-gmbh.de