The Scent of Shopping

Salon.com's Joel Smith writes in a recent column that a marketing research firm has isolated 11 specific scents that not only appeal to shoppers, but actually seem to affect how much we spend in a given store.  The scents have to be congruent with the store (so they wouldn't use a strong pine scent in a coffee shop, for instance), but when they match up well, they really work.  One part of the study went as follows:

Spangenberg and some colleagues set up camp at (you guessed it) a home-goods store in Switzerland to test two similar scents that had been determined to be equally pleasant, equally familiar to customers, equally subtle and equally congruent with the store. One was a simple orange scent; the other was a more complex blend of orange, basil and green tea.

In 18 days of testing, they found that those who made purchases at the store while it smelled simply of orange spent about 20 percent more. And not only 20 percent more than in unscented conditions, but 20 percent more than in the presence of the more complex scent.

In general I stray far far from stores with heavy scents.  I don't remember the last time I went in a Body Shop, for instance, because within a few minutes I feel like my head will explode.  But I do wonder if stores that use subtler scents like this might have an effect on me without my knowing it.