Research has a theory why certain scents encourage people to open their wallets.
Original Article Title: These Scents Will Make You Spend More
A whoosh of warm air, a soft carpet, perfumed air and pleasant music make many shoppers feel at home, but new research has a theory why certain scents encourage people to open their wallets.
The research — “The Cool Scent of Power: Effects of Ambient Scent on Consumer Preferences and Choice Behavior” — due to be published in the January edition of the Journal of Marketing, which is part of the American Marketing Association, carried out three laboratory and two store-based experiments. The researchers demonstrated that people spend more when they are in an environment with “warm scents” such as vanilla or cinnamon (as opposed to cool scents” such as peppermint). “Our findings provide practitioners with concrete insights on how different categories of scents work, and they can ultimately be translated into specific guidance for retailers’ strategy,” the study found.
But the researchers give a surprising reason why consumers spend more: A warm ambient scent leads people to perceive the environment around them as more “socially dense” or more crowded with people, says Adriana Madzharov, assistant professor of marketing at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and co-author of the study. “In other words, you can manipulate spatial perception and this is very important for retailers,” she says. People often shop to make themselves feel better and the more crowded a space, the less powerful they feel, Madzharov says. “People want to get out of this negative space and purchasing luxury products can give your status and power back.”
There are other reasons why certain scents may encourage people to shop. Simple scents are the most effective, according to a 2012 Washington State University and the University of St. Gallen, Spengenberg in Switzerland study published in the Journal of Retailing.
Analyzing the spending of 400 shoppers over 18 days in a home-decorations store, people spent about 20% more with a simple orange scent instead of a more complicated orange-basil blended with green tea. The former scent was just enough to make them feel good, but not too pungent to distract them from the task at hand: shopping. People could also solve word problems more quickly with the simple rather than complex scents, that study concluded.
In 2004, two American scientists won the Nobel Prize for their work explaining how scent can improve our quality of life. If tourists walk into a hotel and smells hints of citrus and herbs, it might reinvigorate them enough to visit the gift shop and help take their minds off the threat of bed bugs.
By QUENTIN FOTTRELL
PERSONAL FINANCE REPORTER
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-scents-will-make-you-spend-more-2014-11-21
