The research on smell is particularly interesting as it is often associated with bringing back past memories. This phenomenon is due to the unique connection of the olfactory system to the limbic system—the area of the brain that influences emotions, memories, and arousal. It’s been found that memories triggered by olfactory information tend to be more emotional and invoke a sense of going back into time when compared with memories that are triggered by verbal or visual information.[1] The smell of a certain perfume can bring back vivid memories of someone special or a certain point in time. The smell of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies might be associated with a childhood visit to grandma’s house.

Smell has such an impact on people’s thoughts and behaviors that many businesses have been incorporating smell into their marketing strategies. Using smell to market products, places, and services is becoming more prevalent with time. The smell of a store and its influence on customers or the smell placed in a new car are examples of how smell is being used in marketing. The use of these scents (termed scent marketing) in stores is to create a pleasant atmosphere that encourages prolonged shopping and, consequently, increased consumption of the items and experiences offered.[2] An oil or leather fragrance in a new car evokes a more pleasing and familiar experience than that of plastic or metal.[3] Associations might even be made between these pleasant scents and a specific business such as a hotel. Thus, merely smelling the scent could bring the business back into the forefront of thought and build a brand. Dollars spent on the initial marketing may form long-term associations that continue to influence buying behaviors well into the future. In a different approach, using the smell of grandma’s chocolate-chip cookies on the packaging for new socks can result in an immediate positive association with the product.

Scent marketing is an area of neuroeconomics that uses varied techniques (such as EEGs or fMRIs) to examine consumers and their reactions. Because of the nature of how we process information through this sense, these scent marketing methods are not easily tuned out like auditory or visual stimuli might be. With so much potential, businesses are studying the physiological responses of consumers to their products and, though we may not consciously pick up on the smell of a store, it is now certain that it may not be an arbitrary one.

—N. Jung

[1] Larsson, M., & Willander, J. (2009). Autobiographical Odor Memory. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1170318-323. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.03934

[2] Emsenhuber, B., (2009). Scent marketing: Subliminal advertising messages. In: Fischer, S., Maehle, E. & Reischuk, R. (Hrsg.), Informatik 2009 – Im Focus das Leben. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V.. (S. 518-518).

[3] Emsenhuber, B., (2009). Scent marketing: Subliminal advertising messages. In: Fischer, S., Maehle, E. & Reischuk, R. (Hrsg.), Informatik 2009 – Im Focus das Leben. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V.. (S. 518-518).