During
my stay in USA, there were two chain stores that I liked to visit
most. The first was the popular coffee house chain 'Starbucks.' I
used to love the coffee aroma that would hit me, as soon as I stepped
in and the comforting and relaxing atmosphere inside the shop. The
second shop that was on my 'most liked' list was a bookshop known as
'Barnes and Noble.' Here again, I used to particularly love the aroma
that came from brand new books on the shelves of the store, mixed
with that of freshly brewed coffee, which originated from a coffee
shop located almost in the middle of the store.
Initially,
I kept wondering
as to what this coffee shop was doing in the middle of a bookstore?
But I soon realized that the aroma of freshly brewing coffee kept
lingering in the store and made the customers like me wait a little
longer in the shop and browse through some more books.
There
has been extensive research on smell related matters. Sometime back I
wrote a blogpost
about Ms. Sissel Tolaas, a Norwegian born scientist working in
Berlin, who is deeply involved for last two decades, in this world of
smell. A study conducted in 2008 and published in the Journal of
Consumer Research says that the smell of chocolate chip cookies made
women more likely to make an impulsive clothing purchase than women
who were not exposed to the aroma. Other research has found that
relaxing smells like lavender may lower heart rates of shop patrons,
making them more relaxed. Such customers are more likely to buy
something without thinking too hard about it. It has also been found
that certain smells may even help consumers remember products
better.
An
experiment for a period of 10 days was recently carried out by
researchers in Belgium and results published in the Journal of
Environmental Psychology. In this experiment, dispensers releasing
smell of chocolate were placed at two different locations in a
bookstore. It was observed that approximately 20 % of the observed
201 customers, positively showed more of purchase-related customer
behaviors like looking at several books closely, reading the
summaries of books, hanging out in the store, talking with staff and
asking questions.
The
overall conclusion of the experiment was that the customers were
twice as likely to look at multiple books closely and read, what they
were about, when the scent was in the air compared to situation when
smell dispensers were moved out. Also, the customers were nearly
three times as likely to interact with personnel and ask questions
after browsing the whole store. Conclusion; people engage more with
the merchandise and staff when a bookstore smells like chocolate.
There
were few more observations too. Women were more likely than men to
spend more time and buy books in the romance and cookbook sections
with chocolate smell. Another interesting finding was that chocolate
smell made the customers get drawn more only to certain categories of
books like those on subjects like food, drink and romance against
certain categories like history, mystery and crime.
Researchers
call these subjects as congruent with the chocolate smell and call
subjects like history, mystery and crime incongruous with chocolate
smell. They also think that their research, though done in a book
store, may turn out relevant even for shop owners selling other stuff
and who want their customers to linger or stick around in their shops
longer. They say that retailers can make use of pleasant ambient
scents, to improve the store environment, leading consumers to
explore the store. The shop owners should also pay particular
attention to whether the scent is thematically appropriate for the
store’s products. e.g. for a shop selling sea surfing gear, smell
of sea breeze.
Ms.
Sissel Tolass, whom I have mentioned above, says that we have almost
forgotten now, that the nose also happens to be an important sensory
or perceptive organ. We detect smells through use of our nose. But
modern humans make so little use of this sense of smell that the
power of this perceptive organ is just being wasted. Maybe we would
get back little more to world of smells if more and more shop
keepers, restaurant owners use this smell techniques in their shops
or restaurants.
26
July 2013
interesting..
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