Would an elaborate fragrance blend make a shop more appealing? Scent may serve different purposes when we enjoy it for its own sake and when we are choosing products.
A 2013 paper by Andreas Herrmann and colleagues examined scent “complexity” in relation to shopping. Its central field experiment compared spending by about 400 customers in a Swiss homewares shop. The aim was not simply to see whether products sold, but to investigate whether ease of processing a scent might be relevant to shopping.
Looking beyond a pleasant smell
The authors focused on the psychological concept of “processing fluency”: how easily incoming information can be processed. Their hypothesis was that even equally pleasant scents might influence reactions to surrounding merchandise differently depending on whether they seemed simple and easy to grasp or composed of multiple elements.
They compared an orange scent with a blend of orange, basil, and green tea. Preliminary testing selected these as differing in complexity without statistically clear differences in pleasantness, familiarity, and related measures. However, failing to find a clear difference does not prove that the scents were identical in every respect.
Here, “simple” refers to the impression a person receives. The orange-essential-oil scent was not treated as chemically consisting of a single molecule.
Changing the scent by day in the same shop
The experiment took place in a homewares shop in northern Switzerland selling items such as plates, baskets, and curtains. Across 18 weekdays of data collection, days were assigned to orange, orange–basil–green tea, or no added scent. Advertising, prices, and merchandise were held constant, and days without data collection separated conditions to avoid lingering scent.
The sample consisted of customers who stayed at least five minutes, actually purchased merchandise, and agreed to the survey. Reported purchases were checked against receipts. The comparison therefore used data closer to actual expenditure than a survey of purchase intentions.
Average spending was higher among surveyed customers on orange-scented days
Mean spending was 56.83 Swiss francs in the orange condition, 43.11 francs with the blend, and 45.96 francs without added scent. The authors reported an overall difference across the three conditions of p = 0.04, with post-hoc comparisons also finding higher spending under orange than under either other condition. There was no clear difference between the blend and no-scent conditions.
The notable point is that the two scented conditions did not produce the same pattern. If a pleasant smell alone were enough to increase shopping similarly, the difference between the two scents would remain unexplained. The authors saw this as a reason to focus on scent complexity.
However, the field experiment alone did not establish the mental sequence in which easier scent processing led to increased spending. An outcome close to sales must be distinguished from the mechanism producing it.
Additional laboratory studies explored the mechanism
Alongside the field experiment, the paper reported experiments using anagrams and a hypothetical shopping task. The authors used tendencies toward better task performance, faster responses, and more favorable product-choice outcomes under the simple scent as evidence consistent with processing fluency.
In hypothetical shopping, the orange condition was associated with a higher total value of chosen products and shorter selection time. The researchers also statistically analyzed a relationship mediated by selection time. These experiments sought to explain the spending difference observed in the shop from another setting.
Nevertheless, hypothetical shopping differs from an actual checkout. Finishing a task quickly does not directly measure only the processing of scent information. Several findings being consistent with an explanation is not the same as proving that mechanism to be the sole cause.
Limitations that a sample of about 400 does not resolve
When generalizing the field findings, the first issue is that conditions changed by day. Customers arriving on the same day share influences such as weather, crowding, and customer mix. Yet the reported comparison analyzed purchases at the customer level. About 400 records do not guarantee the same precision as a trial independently randomizing about 400 people to different scents.
A second issue is that only purchasers were studied. People who left without buying or stayed less than five minutes were excluded. If scent affected whether people bought anything or remained in the shop, it could also change who entered the sample in each condition. The reported average purchase amounts therefore cannot be used to calculate a purchase rate for all visitors or a sales increase for the shop as a whole.
The field experiment also involved one shop and a particular pair of scents. It does not establish that orange is optimal in every shop or that complex perfumes are disliked. A scent drifting in the background differs from perfume deliberately chosen as a product, both in the attention given to it and in its purpose.
Summary
In the field comparison of about 400 people, surveyed purchasers spent more on average on days with the simple orange scent. Combining these results with laboratory tasks, the authors suggested that scent complexity and ease of information processing may be relevant to shopping.
The study added a perspective focused not only on pleasantness but also on how easily a scent’s impression can be grasped. It examined how background scent characteristics relate to choosing products in front of us. However, day-level assignment and analyses restricted to purchasers leave the generality of the effect unresolved. Testing both purchases among all visitors and ease of processing with other scents and shops would help establish the hypothesis more firmly.
Note: The paper’s total sample and the sum of its group counts differ by one person, so this article uses “about 400.”
References
Herrmann, A., Zidansek, M., Sprott, D. E., & Spangenberg, E. R. (2013). The Power of Simplicity: Processing Fluency and the Effects of Olfactory Cues on Retail Sales. Journal of Retailing, 89(1), 30–43 (published online in 2012).
DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2012.08.002
Full original article: PDF provided by Washington State University
Rights: © 2012 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
