Sales Are Depressed When Consumers Feel Pigeonholed…But Scent Can Help

A recent study from the University of Minnesota, Yonsei Universtity in Korea, and Concordia University, Montreal found that when consumers are concerned about feeling stereotyped, they buy less. Consumers who are members of a group that are subject to a negative stereotype hesitate to buy from those company representatives who are outside the group.

The study focused on women as the group and brought up the stereotype “women aren’t good at math” before the subjects were to meet with a financial advisor. Sales were lower when these women met with men as opposed to with women. The researchers found that the subjects did not even have to believe in the stereotype themselves, but merely be aware that there was one that they might be judged by.

The experiment was repeated with auto repair and auto purchases with the stereotype of “women don’t know about cars,” with the same result. Subjects reported higher anxiety when meeting with a sales person outside of their group (females), and were reluctant to purchase.

Interestingly, the presence of a soothing scent, in this case vanilla, relieved the subjects’ anxiety and neutralized the anxiety caused by the anticipation of being stereotyped.

The lesson for companies trying to sell to people who may feel pigeonholed? Be proactive and calm their anxieties using scent. You’ll see a big boost to your bottom line!

Can Fragrance Make Us Better People?

A four-week study in the Netherlands found that the scent of oranges calmed violent criminals, and resulted in less aggression and fewer fights.

The head of police social services in Rotterdam, Herma Heester, said: "It's amazing, fighting in the cells has been dramatically reduced and we are using 10 per cent fewer sedation drugs". ("Violent Criminals Calmed by Scent of Oranges" The Telegraph, Feb. 23, 2011)

Another study found that people in scented environments are more likely to help a stranger. When exposed to pleasant odors, such as baking cookies or roasting coffee, people in a large shopping mall were more likely to help someone by retrieving a dropped pen or providing change for a dollar than in an unscented environment. Participants also reported being in a better mood in the presence of scent. (Study: "The Sweet Smell of...Helping: Effects of Pleasant Ambient Fragrance on Prosocial Behavior in Shopping Malls" by Robert A. Baron, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)


The use of scent for social reasons has almost unlimited applications. Imagine using a pleasant scent in preschools to encourage cooperation, in airports to reduce anxiety, and at charity functions to boost fundraising. Scent...it's not just for selling anymore!

Study Identifies Women's Scent Preferences by Region

Axe, a manufacturer of men's cologne and highly fragranced body products, sponsored a study by Dr. Alan Hirsch to identify what scents "turn girls on." The study found that the scents preferred varies widely by what region within the US.

Here are the findings:

Girls’ Scent Preferences by City
1. New York City – Coffee
2. Los Angeles – Lavender
3. Chicago – Vanilla
4. Houston – Barbeque
5. Atlanta – Cherry
6. Phoenix – Eucalyptus
7. Philadelphia – Clean Laundry
8. Dallas – Smoke/Fireplace
9. San Diego – Suntan Lotion/Ocean
10. Minneapolis-St. Paul – Cut Grass

For single guys outside of these metro areas, there are some scents that a popular across regions, and across the country.

Girls’ Scent Preferences Nationwide
1. Vanilla
2. Coffee
3. Lavender
4. Fresh Air/Rain

Girls’ Scent Preferences Regionally
• East Coast – Coffee
• South – Fire/Smoke
• Midwest – Cut Grass
• West Coast – Baked Goods

In another study commissioned by Axe, researchers asked young women about their ideas on scent and attraction. Here are some of the highlights:

• Dirty little secret: One in four girls will wait anywhere from two weeks to a month before washing their sheets in order to keep their guy’s scent close

• Father doesn’t know best: 56 percent of girls say they won’t date a guy who smells like their dad

• Guard your belongings: One out of two girls admits that she has committed theft by stealing an article of clothing from a guy to smell when he’s gone and nearly 60 percent of girls sleep in their guy’s clothes because they like his lingering aroma

• Need proof of how scent and memory are intertwined? 60 percent of girls still remember the smell of their ex’s cologne

Radio Interview with Rachel Herz

Click on the link below to listen to a great radio interview with researcher Rachel Herz, author of Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell.

Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders

Click on the Listen button to stream the audio. You will need a Real Media player to listen; if you do not have one, you can download the player for free at www.real.com.

Something Stinks in Portland

City Council members in the city of Portland, Oregon are considering and are expected to approve a fragrance-free policy for city workers. City employees would be banned from using perfume, aftershave, and strongly scented powder, deodorant and other personal hygiene products at work. If the measure is passed, workers could be penalized for wearing too much scent. It is not clear how much is “too much.”

The reason is to protect employees who are sensitive to perfumes as well as those who suffer from asthma. However, perfume allergies are primarily skin contact allergies. The chemicals in fragranced products seep into the skin and can cause eczema, characterized by itchy rash, dry skin and redness. People who have perfume allergies are advised to scrutinize their perfumes and body products for the specific chemicals that trigger their symptoms and avoid them or to spray perfume on their clothes, rather than directly on their skin. However, other people’s perfume typically does not affect them.[1]

Those with asthma, however, are a different story. Although it is not clear which of the multiple compounds within perfume are responsible for aggravation of their symptoms, the fact is that perfume does affect them negatively.

Perhaps, instead of banning fragrances for everyone outright, Portland could make decisions on a case-to-case basis where there is a legitimate health issue. And if you are a perfume wearer, and you know a co-worker is sensitive to fragrances, you should have compassion and save your fragrance for the weekend.

If Portland does pass the measure, let’s hope that city employees don’t start complaining about their co-workers’ au natural body smells.

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[1] The Relationship Between Perfumes and Allergies, http://www.brighthub.com/health/allergies-asthma/articles/90680.aspx

Scent-Releasing Shirt Combats Body Odor

A Japanese company has created a shirt with micro capsules that release a rose fragrance when the collar rubs against the skin. The shirt is called the Otoko Kaoru, which translates as “the good smelling man.”

The scent is released slowly, and only when the shirt is worn. The company says that the scent will last up to 10 washes. Sold for around 3000 yen, or the equivalent of $35 US, it is affordable enough for men to stay fragrant on a regular basis.

If the shirt sells well, expect to see pajamas and polo shirts with the same technology. For now, the Otoko Kaoru is only available in Asia.

The shirt is a follow up to a product released in Japan with great success in 2007 with the same name: a scented chewing gum. But all gum has a smell, you say? While all gum has some amount of breath freshening capability, the Otoko Kaoru gum actually has a scent (again, rose) that is absorbed into the body and emitted by the pores.

Now, thanks to the Otoko Kaoru, noses across Japan have some relief from overly smelly men.

Scent Marketing Primer

Newly laundered clothes hanging on a clothes lines, chocolate chip cookies that just got out of the oven, vanilla, grass cut just a few hours ago, a pine forest, a rose garden, freshly baked bread, the salty tang of an ocean breeze, cool fresh air on a spring morning... Speaking of all those, are they starting to trigger some sort of pleasant memory or feeling when you smell them?

It's important that you know that smell is a chemical sense that is tied to the emotional center of the brain. One of the most powerful senses, able to not only to make us salivate, attract us to someone or stir our memories, but it can also change our heart rate and other physiological measures. But that's not all - it can also make us open our wallets to buy something.

Using the senses of sight and hearing, businesses all over the world spend millions every year trying to attract new customers via print ads and TV. However, the real savvy businesses out there are also using the sense of smell to persuade their customers to stop, smell and buy the roses, cars, and houses.

One of the fastest growing trends in advertising is scent marketing. And even though it's not fully understood yet by the majority of businesses, the power of scent has already been successfully applied and can be applied to almost every type of product. Real estate agents know that baking bread or chocolate chip cookies during an open house is going to help sell it. And also, chances are that the sudden spike in home sales during the spring is due to the delicious smells of the blooming hyacinths and daffodils.

Many studies from all over the world have shown that a scented environment makes consumer spend more time and money in that location. A recent study in Las Vegas showed that people spent more time more and spent 45% more money in a scented environment than in an unscented one. In another study, consumers rated a product more favorably and were willing to spend more money for it in a scented room, versus the same exact product in an unscented room.

The secret behind scent is that it creates a "flow state" that leads people to temporarily lose their normal sense of time and become totally consumed in the occurring event. It can last up to several minutes.

So how are major companies out there using fragrance to increase sales? Some use scents that are naturally present in the environment like a bakery funneling the scent of baking bread from the oven area to the front of the shop. Those establishments that are not able to capitalize on their innate smells can create an environment with any fragrance their heart desires, through introducing ambient scent.

A pleasant smell puts the customer in a pleasant, buying mood and increases the chance that of becoming a repeat customer. For instance, Omni Hotels pumps a lemongrass and green tea scent into its lobbies and public places. Rolls Royce was seeing a drop off in customer perception of its cars, even though mechanically, they were the same or better. After investigating, they found the source of the dissatisfaction: the smell! Customers associated the smell of the classic 1965 Silver Cloud with quality, and when the Rolls Royces stopped smelling like this, the satisfaction dropped. Now, Rolls Royce has reproduced the smell of the Silver Cloud and they spray it under the seats in all of their new cars to protect their brand.

Similarly, Singapore Airlines has consistently gotten high marks from consumers in part because they use sensorial marketing to immerse passengers in the smell of a bamboo forest as well as lotus flowers. The fragrance is worn by flight attendants and put on hot towels that are handed to passengers before takeoff.

If your business involves any kind of location, whether retail, hospitality, healthcare, or entertainment, it just makes "scents" to incorporate our most powerful sense: the sense of smell.

How Smell Works: Tracing Scent from Nose to Brain

Researchers at Stanford have traced the path that scent takes from nose to brain, for the very first time. In order to find the connection, they actually reverse engineered the pathway, beginning in the brain and backtracking to the olfactory bulb.

Scientists injected two viruses into mouse brains. The first one, a low-grade virus, cleared the way for the other virus to go from the higher centers in the brain, down the connections to the olfactory bulb. They found that most of the nerve pathways connected to the parts of the brain that determined the mice’s like or dislike of the smell originated from the top part of the olfactory bulb. The concentration of neurons there allows a quick reaction when the mouse is exposed to “bad” smells, such as the scent of a predator.

There are also other neurons from all over the olfactory bulb, which are connected to brain areas that process learned responses to odor. Researchers postulate that their scattered locations allow the mice to have “flexibility in learning to avoid or be attracted to new smells.”[1]

They also discovered that each neuron the brain that receives scent information is connected to at least four neurons in the olfactory bulb, each of which receives input from multiple odor receptors. This is how the brain integrates and makes sense out of a number of different smells.

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[1] “The Brain Knows What the Nose Smells, but How? Standford Researchers Trace the Answer,” Stanford University News Service, February 2, 2011, by Sandeep Ravindran

Remember That Great Hotel?...Using Scent for Hospitality Branding

Over and over again, research has confirmed that our sense of smell is directly linked to our memories and emotions, both powerful factors in branding. Brands that consumers strongly associate with a positive emotion are successful, generating increased dollar sales, repeat sales and customer referrals. Memory, too, plays an important part of the branding experience, helping customers to identify and recall the brand name as well as specific product features and benefits. In order to strengthen their brands, numerous hotels have enlisted the aid of scent branding.

Just as a logo symbolically represents the company, hotels are appealing to the powerful sense of smell by creating “scent logos,” signature scents for their properties. The custom scents are based on the hotel’s ambiance and the emotions they want guests to associate with the hotel.

For example, the Mandarin Oriental uses a mandarin blossom tea scent to evoke not only its décor, but also its name. St. Regis wants guests feel like they are arriving at a lovely home, furnished by Mrs. Astor. Their signature scent includes roses and sweet peas, Mrs. Astor’s favorite flowers, mixed with a touch of Mr. Astor’s tobacco.

Le Meridien hotels wanted to unify its properties to be of a consistent quality and feel, appealing to creative people like artists, architects, designers, and chefs. Now, upon entering the hotel doors, guests experience a whiff of old books, leather, and wood sweetened with vanilla.

Hyatt hotels scent each of their properties, and take this strategy one step further. For their upscale Park Hyatt brand, each individual location has its own unique scent to emotionally bind guests to the property and distinguish it from others, even within the Park Hyatt family.

Senior vice president of Westin Hotels & Resorts summed it up nicely, “Scent is most closely tied to memory, and if we’re in the business of creating memories and wanting our guests to choose Westin whenever they travel, we have to make a memory link.”[1]

So far, most hotels confine their scent to the lobby areas and casinos. Some sell candles with the hotel’s signature scent in their gift shops, but there are many more applications for scent in hospitality. Technology now exists to make scenting guest rooms feasible. Hotels can also make good use of scented paper to send advertisements to their frequent guests in advance of common vacation times, to awaken the wonderful memories of their last vacation. The results for using scent in hospitality are positive; now we have to expand on its use.

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[1] “The Sweet Smell of the Modern Hotel,” Chandler Burr, Travel and Leisure, June 2008

New Device Brings Scent to Home Entertainment

Scent Sciences has released ScentScape(R) a digital scent delivery machine that connects to a user's home PC or gaming console to deliver smells relevant to the action.  Scents include pine forest, ocean, flowers and smoke. The scent is delivered via 20 different scent cartridges, which are included with the unit, and the company says that the cartridges last 200 hours or more, depending on usage. The idea is to more completely immerse the player in the game and enriching the gaming experience. Units retail for $69.99.

In addition, the company sells the ScentEditor(R), which allows you to custom choose scents to your home movie viewing. The focus is on nostalgic scents, such as roasting turkey, freshly mowed grass and birthday cake to evoke viewers' memories. All devices are plug and play.

Just imagine, with surround sound, 3D and smell, your home entertainment is only missing the sensation of touching the people and characters on the screen. But, with some of the violent games, that just might be a good thing.

Intro to Scent Marketing

Informative, tongue in cheek video about scent marketing...Enjoy!

Love Is in the Air

With Valentine’s Day approaching, the topic of love is something on everyone’s mind. And since scent is the only sense that directly is tied to the emotional center of the brain, it makes “scents” to talk about the fragrance of love.

Pheromones are chemical scents released in order to attract the opposite sex. They are not smelled in the same way as a fragrance, but with specialized receptors inside the nose. Pheromones are well known to work among various species of animals, however, their effectiveness in human sexual attraction is somewhat controversial. Some scientists say that human beings have “outgrown” the need for such chemical markers in choosing a mate through evolution, while others maintain their continued relevance.

Science has confirmed that people do sniff out potential love interests by gravitating to those with opposite natural immunities within our genetic makeup. The reason is that the resulting offspring will be stronger because of the combination of immunities. A Brazilian study found that, when women were given unwashed t-shirts worn by men, they rated the smell more pleasant for those men who had opposite MHC.[1]

Interestingly, when people marry those with differing MHC, (major histocompatibilty complex, which transmits information about immunities), they tend to have better, more loving and longer lasting relationships than those with similar MHC.

However, when women are on birth control pills, they tend to choose partners with the same MHC as theirs. The reason, scientists say, is that the pill tricks the body into thinking that it is pregnant, and for a pregnant woman, it is safer to surround herself with males who are family members. Women who form relationships with MHC similar men are more likely to feel sexually unsatisfied and cheat on their partners.[2]

So, assuming that you have found your perfect match, what scents can rev up the romance? Traditional romantic fragrances include roses, musk and chocolate. A study confirmed that people are, indeed, sexually/romantically stimulated by scent. However, the kinds of scents that work may surprise you. The top scent for male stimulation was a combination of pumpkin pie and lavender, followed by a licorice/doughnut blend. Women like to wear sexy perfumes with musk, but tend to be aroused more by the musk than the men.

Aromatherapy identifies a number of scents that act as an aphrodisiac, including basil, jasmine, neroli, ylang ylang, bergamot and sandalwood. So try one of these scents to infuse a little extra romance this Valentine's Day. Your partner will love it!

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[1] “New Evidence That The MHC Influences Odor Perception In Humans: A Study With 58 Southern Brazilian Students”, Pablo Sandro Carvalho Santos, Juliano Augusto Schinemann, Juarez Gabardo and Maria da Graça Bicalho, LIGH—Laboratório de Imunogenética e Histocompatibilidade, Departamento de Genética, Paraná, Brazil, February 2004

[2] “Birth Control Pills Affect Women’s Taste in Men,” Melinda Wenner, Scientific American, December 2008

Katy Perry to Scent Concert Tour

The sometimes outrageous pop star, Katy Perry, has announced that she is going to scent her 2011 California Dreams World Tour. The concert's theme will be along the lines of her California Girls video. According to the singer, the concert will smell "like you're in cotton candy heaven." Perry's concerts will be scented by our own ScentEvents. Way to go, Neal!

Perry's use of scent as part of her concert experience is sure to catch on with other performers.

Incorporating scent into live performances is a great way to further immerse the audience in the entertainment experience and connect with them on an emotional level.