Table of Contents
A) What is Scent Marketing?
B) Types of Scent Marketing
• Ambient Marketing
• Signature Smells
• Thematic Smells
• Aroma Billboard
C) Benefits of Scent Marketing
• Creating a sensory recognition
• Improved Perception
• Increased Sales
D) The Science Behind Scent Marketing
E) Who Uses Scent Marketing?
• Abercrombie & Fitch
• Starbucks
• Pandora
• Samsung
• Caesar's Casino Palace
• Cinnabon
F) Conclusion
“Nothing is more memorable than a smell. One scent can be unexpected, momentary and fleeting, yet conjure up a childhood summer beside a lake in the mountains.”
A few years ago, by some slip-up, the scent of the food Starbucks makes overpowered the coffee scent. This resulted in a drop in sales and less foot traffic in the stores. An international scent marketing company approached Starbucks; helping them get their coffee scent back.
Did you know that you can control customers memory, emotion, and even buying tendencies by taking advantage of the strengths of the fifth sense?
What is scent marketing?
The smell is the most powerful weapon both emotionally and physically. The smell captivates consumers and establishes a profound emotional impact.
Scent Marketing is the art of taking a company’s brand identity, marketing statements, target audience and developing a fragrance that intensifies these values. A scent can manipulate behaviour and trigger recollections nearly instantaneously. When the smell is incorporated with other marketing strings, it can heighten the brand experience and establish a long-lasting alliance with consumers.
Is ambient scent and scent branding the same?
• Ambient scent has the strongest impact in enhancing consumer behaviour in terms of cognitive, emotion, evaluation, willingness to return to the store and purchasing intention compared to any other atmospheric variables.
• Ambient scent uses fragrance to enhance the experience of consumers with different purposes, whereas scents in scent branding are unique to each company’s identity.
For example, in healthcare, lavender is used for relaxation and to create an overall feeling of trust.
• Scent branding includes making a unique smell for a particular brand so that it results in a longer impact and strengthens customer bonds. It leads to creating a signature scent.
Some businesses have triumphed over the technique of building bespoken aromas that are unique to their brand for the objective of strengthening brand commitment. It is not unusual to find gift boxes from different stores having a peculiar aroma that registers and lingers in the minds of customers to fulfil as a reminder of what they bought.
For instance, Abercrombie & Fitch used a ‘fierce’ odour in their stores to evoke a strong connection with male teenagers that come shopping at their stores. As such, the development of signature scents is one of the ploys that marketers can use for brand promotion.
• Improved perception
Creating an outstanding first-time shopping ordeal for every new and loyal customer is key to bagging lots of sales. Scent marketing can be used to influence how consumers feel about your brand and their overall shopping experience.
The smell you use can set the tone for a longer, beneficial customer experience but the wrong scent can also have the opposite effect, sending them for the exit.
• Increased sales
This helm is the top drive that every company has, growing sales. The right kind of smell in the business speculations can help augment its marketing strategy effortlessly. It will accomplish this by altering or enhancing the awareness that consumers have about the company brand and the quality of its products.
As a result, the customers are bound to interact more with the brand. For instance, different research proved that electronics and kitchen appliance retailers could increase their sales up to about 33% if they place sugar cookie or apple pie scents on their sales floors and stores.
The Science Behind Scent Marketing
Olfaction (the sense of smell) is not the “one size fits all” experience we perceive it to be. How the smell is first processed hinges on how well (and if) an odour molecule affixes itself to the receptors on the olfactory epithelium, a strip of tissue with millions of sensory neurons that lives in the back of the nose. Smell begins there, finding itself going over the tips of these neurons that bind odour molecules. We have approximately 450 different types of olfactory receptors that are activated by different odour molecules.
Then the brain comes into the equation. When the odour molecule attaches itself to the receptor, an electrical signal is sent to the olfactory bulb (a structure at the base of the forebrain that sends the signal to other parts of the brain for more processing). One of these areas is the thalamus, which transports some of the smell information to the hippocampus and the amygdala. These are the regions of the brain that are involved with learning and memory. That’s the reason thoughts of that special someone come to mind when you smell a certain perfume.
But what about the immediate emotional response? Our sense of smell is processed by the limbic system which is on the same left side of the brain where emotions and memories are kept. This direct path to the emotional part of our brains means scent doesn't have to be processed or interpreted.
How does scent marketing influence customers?
The science behind scent marketing isn’t just academic — major retailers like Nike found that scent marketing in retail stores “increased intent to purchase by 80%.” In another real-world scent marketing experiment, the smell of fresh-brewed coffee at a gas station increased coffee sales by 300%.
Scents have also been shown to tempt customers to stay in retail spaces longer and browse more, boost their perception of quality, and establish a warm sentiment of intimacy.
Abercrombie & Fitch is an American based retail giant that sells upscale casual apparel for teens. It uses very strong and overpowering scents in its shops. This strategy is based on their target population.
The clothing company uses their very own fragrance (originally it was Fierce but has recently changed to Ellwood). Some companies prefer to have a signature scent created for them. In this case, they have a scent associated with their brand. By using their scent, they immediately create customer recognition.
2. Starbucks
The invigorating scent of coffee is familiar even if you aren’t a coffee fan. This scent is incredibly tantalising. The aroma of freshly-made coffee wafts through Starbucks outlets and their surroundings. The coffee shop uses this delicious scent to lure its customers in.
3. Pandora
Jewellery brand Pandora introduced ambient scenting in its stores. The object is to enhance the shopping experience and create a great atmosphere. Pandora exec was quoted saying, “we’ve created a relaxed and comfortable shopping experience. [We] believe that our scenting programme has helped us stand out from competitors.”
4. Samsung
Turning the preconception that tech has no smell around, the electronics giant has long used scent in its flagship stores. One signature scent used has been ‘Intimate Blue’, which the brand calls ‘crisp, sharp and evocative’ reinforcing the exceptional qualities of the brand. The scent is gender neutral to appeal to a variety of consumers.
5. Caesar’s Palace Casino
Originally, casinos added scent to their space only to mask the odour of cigarette smoke. Recently this has changed. Caesar’s Palace, for example, uses a beautiful, light, rose scent with hints of green woods and citrus and reports have shown that scents entice gamblers to stay, play and completely relax. We are the local leaders in scenting casinos (among other spaces). We pride ourselves on creating an immersive environment where guests can completely lose themselves in the fast-paced, energetic casino environment and stay for many hours.
6. Cinnabon
Often companies or brands use an actual scent marketing team to create a signature scent that sets them apart. Some companies can create the scent themselves. Cinnabon’s well-known scent is a deliberate and methodical plan to convince you to buy cinnamon rolls. Anyone walking past Cinnabon never fails to notice the smell of the delicious cinnamon buns. The bakery chain wants to lure customers in with the smell. They employ many tactics to ensure their customers are enticed by the delicious aroma. Stores are intentionally located in malls and airports so that the “smells can linger”. Cinnamon rolls are baked every 30 minutes! Some stores even warm-up sheets of cinnamon and brown sugar to keep the scent in the air.
Yet, does scent awareness kill its influence?
For a long time, scientists were halved on the issue of whether people’s awareness of the smell amounted to something.
• On the one hand, some studies found that people were only influenced by ambient scent when they didn’t take conscious notice.
• On the other hand, other studies showed that smell influenced choice and behaviour regardless of people noticing it.
After analyzing 30 different studies using various settings and experimental designs – from job applicants wearing perfume, to restaurants trying to attract the outside crowds with spicy food scents – the jury is finally out.
It appears that awareness of the smell itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing (nor is it good), but awareness of the underlying persuasive intent is because when people feel someone is trying to influence their actions, they rely on harsh defensive mechanisms.
So try not to trigger people’s persuasion alarms by hiding your scent nozzles in plain sights, or by using scent tactics that have become well known by the general public. Otherwise, people will mentally close their wallets and march out of the store – and sometimes literally so.
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