Wondering why we now have all these fragrances on products and in stores? It’s because scent makes shoppers buy more.
“It basically enhances the environment for a first great impression,” says Biondi, whose company serves everyone from Express clothing to Mandalay Bay Resorts. Retailers, hotels, and even car makers use scents, he says, to evoke certain moods that will make customers happier with the brand.
“It’s very subtle,” he says. “When it’s done best, it’s not overwhelming, just enough for someone to look around and say, ‘It really smells nice.'”
It’s well known in marketing circles: Scents can have a powerful effect on consumer behaviour. After sound, scent is the second most powerful sense, experts say, and the only one of our five that bypasses the rational part of our brain to tap directly into our emotions. By spraying the right molecules into the air — into their merchandise, or even onto their letterhead — companies can make customers feel relaxed, energized, safe, young or sexy.
Read more at ABC News: Smells Like Profit: Scents in Stores, on Products, Makes Shoppers Buy More
Spaces with these scents are inaccessible to me given my MCS disability. In a pinch, I might last a few hours, but the hangover will cost me a day of reduced productivity for every hour in the fragrance.
Specifically, my manager’s manager has called a meeting in the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas a couple of months from now. I have had to decline the meeting, solely because there is fragrance in that building. This has cost the Mandalay Bay a 2 night stay, and the meals I would have consumed.
There is another large hospitality business near where I work. I got so sick from the fragrance which is over used there that I have never returned to that building, never will, and have declined all business dinners etc hosted there since. Again, direct loss of revenue to the business which decided to exclude me by putting that stuff in the air.
This isn’t a preference. It is not about smell. It’s about the chemical constituents of the fragrance. I’d love a law that required any place putting this stuff in the air to have an MSDS, available to anyone who asked, and the MSDS is required to list each and every ingredient (no escape clause, no “fragrance” in the ingredients). I’d settle for disclosure of the solvents and enhancers, particularly the enhancers (think MSG but for smells not taste) which act on the nervous system.
Scents make me head for the door! Our local mall has a “Food Court,” a section of which is infused with scent. Not knowing this, I joined some friends at a table right in the vulnerable area. I couldn’t tell the source of the scent, but it was all around us. When I got home, I had to air all my outer clothes on the clothesline outdoors, wash my other clothes and wash my hair. NOT a way to enhance whatever “food” was being offered and certainly not the way to make me want to shop there, or even go back ever again.
Scents make me flee and not buy anything! I have to do most of my shopping online, too. Everything that comes into the house has to go through a process confirming “no scent,” “no dog or other allergens,” and everything gets washed no matter what. (We quarantine/isolate items at front door and clean immediately–even ourselves–we change into indoor clothes.) MCS and allergies are no fun.
Scents in stores make me so ill (I have MCS) that I now shop almost exclusively online for everything from clothes, to electronics, to home goods, to groceries as fragrances trigger bodywide muscle pain and debilitating headaches. How long will we have to suffer from this at the hands of profit?
My wife heard a marketing expert on an NPR show discussing fragrances in products. He revealed that many fragrances used in personal care and household products now contain stimulants, which literally habituate people to those fragrances. Have you ever spoken with someone who said they just can’t wake up in the morning without taking a shower with their favorite powerfully scented soap, e.g., Coast or Irish Spring? Apparently, it’s not just the fragrance that wakes them up. I believe my wife heard this expert mention that 21 different stimulants have been found in scented products. Besides literally drugging people into becoming habitual users, marketers use scent in household products as a reward. Each time you use the product, the (supposedly) pleasant smell rewards you for using the it. This pleasant association of scent and product entices you on a subconscious level to continue to use and purchase it. In simple terms, marketers of personal care and household products are manipulating us into buying their products. This particular consumer free market is not so free.
I noticed a couple of months ago that Wal Mart had perfume smells everywhere in their store. I have asthma and mcs and have had to use my rescue inhaler everytime i go in there. I don’t go as often as i used to. They evidently don’t care about people that can’t take the smells. It is awful to go there now.They should know that scents like that are toxic. Trying to find another place to shop.
Apparently the ‘aromotherapy’ idea exploded and we are awash in the backflow.
Scented products keep me online – MCS is no fun and we have been inundated with chemicals, thus the ‘C’. Stores with aisle of scented cleaning products = headache, dizziness, and sometimes really vague ringing in ears. Just last week I had to make a mad dash out of the grocery store…
Scented products, scented people, and often someone walks past wearing something that just sucks the air away. Even if a natural scent there can be reactions (allergies). Candles, trash bags, etc – it’s gone too far!