Scents as seducers … the impact of olfactory stimuli on consumers’ behaviour

Odour is an affective stimulus that elicits both positive as well as negative emotional responses. This has implications for the way consumers evaluate products. Odour as a marketing tool has received an increased amount of attention recently. Retailers are exploring the impact of scents on consumers’ purchase behaviour (think for example about the smell of fresh pastries when you enter a supermarket). Nowadays, technological developments enable the use of scent-patches on packaging and ads, which makes the application of scents in the marketplace easier.

Despite its practical relevance, few studies have been conducted that investigate why and when scents exert influence on consumer behaviour. Does odour really have an impact on consumer behaviour? And if so, how can we prevent ourselves from these external influences?

A number of studies were conducted in the Research Centre for Consumer Psychology and Marketing (Department of Marketing, Ghent University), which investigated the impact of scents on consumers’ product evaluations. Both pleasant as well as unpleasant scents were used in the studies. Insights into the latter kind of stimuli are especially relevant for retailers who have a problem with “unpleasant” smells (e.g. a fish department in a supermarket).

In short, our results were as follows:

• Pleasant scents result in more positive product evaluations
• The effect of pleasant scents is more pronounced if the odour corresponds with the to-be-evaluated product
• When consumers are not very involved with their purchases, then a positive odour – irrespective of its correspondence – has a positive influence on evaluations. That means that an apple that smells like a banana will also lead to a more positive product evaluation
• Unpleasant odours generally result in less negative product evaluations
• When people are sufficiently involved with their purchases, then unpleasant odours will only have a negative influence on evaluations of products that correspond with the odour. That means that a bad smelling banana odour will have no impact on the evaluation of an apple.

Our findings have implications for both consumers as well as for marketing practitioners.

The most striking finding with regard to individual consumers is that we all are very pliant for – unconscious – marketing influences. These persuasive attempts are especially influential when consumers have not enough resources (as a result for example of insufficient purchase involvement). One way to overcome these influences is to be sufficiently aware of their existence and to be sufficiently involved with the purchase process.

A remarkable finding for marketing practitioners is that the effect that scents have on product evaluations depends on the degree of a) consumer involvement and b) correspondence of the odor with the to-be-evaluated product.