The Rise of Scent Marketing: A Growing Trend in Retail

I’m Laurie Morgan, the Marketing Manager at Quintessence Fragrances. With over 15 years of industry experience in product development and creative marketing, I specialise in driving growth and innovation in both national and global markets.

 

What is Scent Marketing?

Scent marketing, also known as ambient fragrance, is a strategic approach used by retailers to enhance the customer experience and strengthen brand identity through the use of specific scents. By diffusing a carefully chosen fragrance throughout a store, businesses can evoke emotions, trigger memories, and create a memorable atmosphere that resonates with customers. This sensory experience can influence shoppers’ moods and behaviours, encouraging them to spend more time in the store and building brand loyalty. Scent marketing leverages the powerful connection between smell, memory, and emotion, making it a valuable tool in creating immersive and engaging retail environments.

 

 

What Are Some Key Reasons Retailers Are Opting to Create Their Own Signature Ambient Scents?

Ambient fragrance has become central to creating engaging, memorable spaces across various industries, especially retail. The power of scent lies in its ability to evoke emotions and trigger memories subconsciously. In a retail space, the right ambient fragrance can set a distinct mood, elevate comfort levels, and create a lasting sensory experience that reinforces brand identity and often translates into increased brand loyalty. For brands with multiple locations, a signature scent provides consistency across spaces, ensuring that customers have a cohesive experience regardless of where they encounter the brand worldwide.

 

 

How to Create a Signature Scent for Your Business

Working with a fragrance house and creative perfumer plays a crucial role in helping a brand develop a signature scent. Typically, a perfumer would start by gaining an understanding of the brand’s DNA. Through discussions with the brand, the perfumer works to understand the brand’s identity, values, and target audience, as well as capturing its essence and the emotions the brand wishes to evoke. Using their expertise, a perfumer can then begin to translate the brand’s identity into a fragrance.

 

Translating a brand’s identity into a fragrance involves selecting specific notes and accords that reflect the brand’s personality. For example, a luxury brand might opt for rich, opulent notes like oud and amber, while a fresh, youthful brand might choose brighter, citrus and floral notes.

 

The initial fragrance selection will often be refined through multiple iterations, involving feedback from the brand and sometimes external focus groups who can help in fine-tuning the scent to ensure it aligns perfectly with the brand’s vision.

 

 

 

 

How Do You See the Role of Scent Marketing Evolving in the Retail Industry?

Brick-and-mortar retailers are under increasing pressure from rising consumer demands and e-commerce to deliver memorable in-store experiences. As consumers lean into the convenience of purchasing online, they now expect more from a retail space. Consumers want an immersive experience that they can’t get online.

 

Retailers are often aware of the impact a store’s layout, décor, or even choice of music can have on sales, but scent is becoming a big part of this too.

 

Our sense of smell is uniquely connected to the brain’s limbic system, which controls memory and emotion. Unlike our other senses, smell bypasses many mental filters, leading us to react emotionally to scents before we even identify them.

 

In a retail environment, this means that scent can influence your subconscious mind far more quickly than, for example, print advertisements. Retailers can harness this rapid response to their advantage to evoke specific thoughts or emotions that resonate with their brand identity. The moment you pick up this scent, your mind is transported into the retailer’s world, where the products around you perfectly complement your new mood.

 

Research indicates that this profound psychological impact significantly affects consumers’ mood, cognition, and perceived environment quality. This is especially useful in retail environments where a calming scent such as lavender or vanilla can encourage longer browsing, while a bright, fresh scent such as citrus or peppermint may stimulate alertness, energise, and uplift.

 

Studies have also shown that a well-chosen ambient fragrance can increase the time customers spend in a retail space, which often correlates with higher spending. For instance, a luxury fragrance in a high-end boutique can elevate the perception of quality, encouraging customers to feel more confident in premium purchases.

 

 

Are There Notable Case Studies of Retailers Who Are Using Scent Marketing Strategies?

Apple introduced scent marketing in its retail stores in 2018. They use a signature fragrance of ‘green apples and mint’ diffused through their HVAC system to create a distinctive and memorable in-store atmosphere. The scent is carefully designed to be subtle, combining elements like crisp apple notes with a hint of wood, giving a sense of innovation, freshness, and the brand’s signature minimalism. This olfactory branding aims to enhance the overall shopping experience, encouraging customers to linger, explore products, and associate the pleasing aroma with the brand.

 

The White Company often uses its signature scent ‘Seychelles’, throughout its stores. This delightful blend of fresh bergamot, bright orange, and rich amber, combined with warming notes of exotic coconut, vanilla, and almond, helps create a welcoming and luxurious atmosphere that aligns perfectly with the brand’s aesthetic.

 

Nike has also had notable success experimenting with scents like freshly cut grass in their golf sections and the smell of basketball rubber in areas where basketball products are displayed. These scents help to enhance the thematic experience of different sections within the store.

 

Even tech giant Samsung has utilised a scent marketing strategy, crafting ‘Intimate Blue’ as its signature scent. Described as 'crisp, sharp, and evocative,’ this choice of scent aims to underscore the brand’s exceptional and distinctive characteristics. ‘Intimate Blue’ was intentionally crafted to be gender-neutral, ensuring its broad appeal among diverse consumers.

 

 

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