Stop and Smell the Greenbacks
The sweet smell of success has taken on a whole new meaning.
Retailers are increasingly turning to enjoyable scents, pumped into stores, to make shoppers comfortable and more willing to spend.
Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell & Taste Treatment & Research Foundation, told Forbes.com, “Smell has a greater impact on purchasing than everything else combined. If something smells good, the product is perceived as good.”
Smell as a marketing tool is growing in importance with retailers. Bloomingdale’s, Food Lion, HEB, Kroger, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Petco, Saks Fifth Avenue and Sony Style among those using fragrance to stimulate positive emotions along with product and service sales.
ScentAir Technologies, which bills itself as “the market leader of in-store scent solutions,” counts Bloomingdale’s among its clients.
According to ScentAir’s web site, Bloomies uses different scents throughout the store depending on the department. A baby powder scent is used in the infant department, lilac in intimate apparel, coconut in swimsuits and sugar cookie, chocolate and evergreen in use during the Christmas holiday selling season.
The Hard Rock Hotel in Orlando, Florida is also among ScentAir Technologies’ clients. According to Forbes, the hotel began pumping a waffle-cone and sugar-cookie fragrance into the air to attract shoppers to an “out-of-the-way ice cream shop” in the facility. Sales jumped 45 percent in the first six months after the hotel began using the scent.
Discussion Questions: Where does scent generally rank in retailers’ strategy to encourage consumer purchases? What stores, if you are aware of any, smell
the best or worse to you?
This from a BBC report: “When your olfactory receptors are stimulated, they transmit impulses to your brain. This pathway is directly connected to your
limbic system, the part of your brain that deals with emotions. That’s why your reactions to smell are rarely neutral – you usually either like or dislike a smell. Smells also
leave long-lasting impressions and are strongly linked to your memories. The scent of mown grass, for example, might remind you of a childhood summer holiday, and the smell of
chocolate chip cookies may make you think of your grandmother.”
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12 Comments on "Stop and Smell the Greenbacks"
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There’s a lot to this that makes sense. I adore the smell of Aveda, Illumination and Bath & Body stores and can’t resist coming in when I pass by. I avoid certain grocery stores and c-stores that smell like fried chicken grease that clings to my hair.
Retailing is multi-sensory and smell is a very important part of this. It can range from subconsciously pleasant to overtly powerful. Just like messaging, what scent should be used to create experiences should be rooted in who we are connecting with, what it’s linked to and what kind of emotion we seek to create.
My only concern is that the chemicals used to “create” scent aren’t harmful to people if we’re exposed to them on an ongoing basis.
Most academic studies on scent do not find a significant impact. Many studies that claim to demonstrate positive effects had very small samples. However, the level of the scent in the air seems to be a key variable. If the scent is so faint that few people notice it, the behavior change will be small. Choosing a scent that complements the environment and having the right amount in the air can help stores improve their performance.
I won’t name names but scent does impact the way I evaluate a supermarket. Typically stores that smell like a freshly cracked open orange versus dead fish will have noticeable differences in operations levels. If I were to name a store, Whole Foods seems to do a nice job with scent.
To me, scent research is about as reliable as phrenology or the “science” of deducing character by readings bumps on the skull. What smells good is a cultural issue. Many people, (myself included,) have an allergy to certain perfuming agents so when we go into one of these “engineered olfactory environments” where somebody goes a little too heavy on the scent we start sneezing on our fellow shoppers and are forced to leave the store. Also scents tend to be a little bit like colors — they seem to come and go in and out of fashion. Finally, there seems to be some conflicting data on scents. I remember reading a study from he U.K. several years ago that suggested men could be driven to near sexual frenzy by exposing them to vanilla scent, but I rarely see orgies in mall candle shops. Can scents help? Maybe in certain retail environments when employed moderately. Are they the wave of the future? I think not.
“Smell technology” in stores is here to stay
It makes shoppers feel good and willing to pay.
Whole Foods does a good job of aromatizing
which gains acceptance for price supersizing.
I’m not aware of any major grocery chain stores that knowingly are using scent technology to improve shopping experience and stimulate sales. However, I think that retailers should take a look at this as another (merchandising ) tool that might help put shoppers in a more positive frame of mind. I know that when I walk a store and the in-store bakery has just finished a batch of fresh bread, my taste buds go into overdrive and I have a urge to buy…and in and near the floral area, the sweet scents help create a store environment that says natural and fresh….
For 21 years, Cinnabon stores have used their scents expertly to create sales. They have 600 stores in 43 states and 30 countries. Without the cinnamon and sugar aroma, how many bakeries would they have today?