A perfume smelled after learning that it comes from an admired brand, and one smelled without knowing its name: can the same contents create different impressions? Even when we believe we are checking a fragrance with our own nose, what we know at that moment may enter into our evaluation.
In 2020, Portuguese researchers Teresa Garcia-Marques and Marília Prada published a paper investigating how brand information and direct sensory experience relate to product evaluations. Combining perfume sampling in a shop with an experiment involving writing on paper, they asked under what conditions brand effects become larger. Here, we focus on the smelling experiment conducted in an actual perfume shop.
Changing when the brand is revealed in a Paris perfume shop
The smelling experiment recruited 166 female tourists aged 30–50 visiting a perfume shop in Paris. Participants smelled perfume on a paper strip and rated how favorable they found the experience on a seven-point scale.
The researchers used two perfumes from one French luxury brand. One was its best-selling perfume and the other its least-selling. The paper does not identify the brand or products. The authors called them “high-quality” and “low-quality” based on sales, not on objective testing of their ingredients or perfumery quality.
Participants were randomly assigned both to the perfume they would smell and to when they would learn its brand name. The study compared disclosure immediately before smelling with disclosure after participants had given their ratings. It compared different groups rather than asking the same person to rate the perfume twice, before and after learning the brand.
All participants reported knowing the brand very well and regarding it as high-status. The findings should therefore be distinguished from situations involving an unfamiliar brand name or comparisons among brands at different price levels.
Ratings were higher when the brand name came first
Participants who heard the brand name before smelling gave an average rating of 4.43 out of seven. Those told after rating gave an average of 3.05. This difference was statistically significant: having brand information before smelling was associated with a more favorable evaluation of the experience.
There was also a difference between perfumes: the stronger seller averaged 4.17, and the weaker seller 3.32. Brand information did not determine the entire evaluation; differences between the perfumes were reflected in ratings as well. However, these two figures do not establish that a better-selling perfume is objectively superior.
Does engagement with the smelling task matter too?
The researchers also considered how enthusiastically participants approached the smelling task. Two observers assessed motivation using behavior such as willingness to try the product, the number of times participants smelled the strip, and questions about the product. The observers were not told the experimental conditions.
Among participants whom observers rated as less motivated, the average was 5.22 when the brand was disclosed first and 2.84 when it was disclosed afterward. For those rated as more motivated, the corresponding averages were 3.64 and 3.27. The difference associated with brand information was larger in the former group.
“Motivation” here was neither a self-report nor a condition that researchers had deliberately raised or lowered in advance. It was an assessment based on visible behavior. The findings therefore do not demonstrate a causal relationship in which smelling carefully eliminates brand influence. The authors themselves identified this as a major limitation.
Did the smell itself change, or the way it was evaluated?
The same paper includes another experiment in which 91 people wrote on paper and evaluated the experience. In addition to brand information, the researchers manipulated whether participants briefly used the paper before evaluating it. Brand information had a larger effect in the condition with that prior experience.
Considering both experiments, the authors suggest that brands have a stronger role in evaluations of sensory experience under conditions that discourage detailed consideration of product information. However, the paper experiment was not a repeated perfume-smelling experiment, so it does not establish that smelling the same perfume more often increases brand influence.
Nor did this research distinguish whether the fragrance as perceived by the nose changed or whether participants used the brand as a cue when assigning a score. While emphasizing possible effects on sensory experience itself, the authors acknowledge alternative explanations and call for further testing.
The perfume experiment concerned two products from one brand and female tourists within a limited age range. In addition, the original paper contains an inconsistency between its statement that three participants were excluded because observers disagreed and information related to the statistical sample size. These boundaries also matter when extending the results to other shops and customers or trying to predict purchasing behavior.
Conclusion
In this shop experiment, hearing the name of a familiar luxury brand before smelling increased ratings of the fragrance experience. The difference was larger among participants whom observers considered less motivated toward the task. Perfume evaluation may involve not only the fragrance smelled but also prior information and the way people approach sampling.
The authors emphasize that brand influence was stronger under conditions in which people might not evaluate the product through detailed deliberation. In the paper experiment, the influence was also larger after brief prior use. They consider the possibility that familiarity reduces close scrutiny. The implication is that even direct experience does not necessarily make evaluation independent of brand.
Based on these results, the authors emphasize the possibility that sensory experience itself changed, rather than explaining the findings solely as considered inferences about quality from the brand. However, using the brand as a judgment cue remains an alternative explanation, and how familiarity operated is still uncertain. The findings do not establish that repeated perfume sampling would produce the same effect.
References
Authors: Teresa Garcia-Marques, Marília Prada
Article: When does brand matter more than our senses? The influence of touching or smelling experience on product evaluation
Journal: Análise Psicológica 38(2) (2020)
DOI: 10.14417/ap.1725
Full text: Article on SciELO
