Open Access

This thesis Increasing Business Success through emotionalisation? Chances and limitations of Neuromerchandising® in the food retailing industry based on the example of HIT Markt deals with the changed customer behaviour of the modern customer and the resulting challenges for the dealers in the food retailing industry. Solely providing the merchandise is nowadays not sufficient anymore to hold its own in a further developing market of the food retailing industry. Nowadays’ consumers want to be entertained and to be addressed with all their senses. Therefore, the dealers, may it be discounters like Aldi or Edeka or high-quality dealers like HIT or Rewe are searching for ways to satisfy the changed customer needs. This requires, besides an appealing design of the store a lot more: a rethinking of the dealers by which means one can bind the customers to the own store in a very active business environment. One thing dealers have learned by now is that you can only be sustainably successful if you address the customers on an emotional level. During this thesis it will be analysed if and how an emotionalisation of the store leads to more business success. With the help of latest findings in neuroscience the changed consumer and buying behaviour will be explained. On this basis, the possibilities and limitations of neuromarketing® in the food retailing industry will be discussed. With regard to current developments in the food retailing industry concrete proposals for solutions will be developed, how dealers can satisfy modern customer needs better. This will be realized with a concrete practical example: the HIT Markt in Engelskirchen, on which the practical part of this thesis focusses. Finally it will be analysed how current developments will influence the future of the dealers and the food retailing industry.