5.4: Olfactic Persuasion

Olfactic Persuasion: Aroma & Smell

“Woman Smelling Flowers" by Petr Kratochvil is Licensed under CC0 Public Domain

“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no remedy for it.” —Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Olfaction is the most ancient sense and is directly connected with emotional areas in the brain. It gives rise to perception linked to emotion both in everyday life and in memory-recall activities” (Pizzoli et al.). Unlike the other senses, smell does not synapse in the thalamus before connecting to the cerebral cortex. This intimate connection between the olfactory system and the cerebral cortex is one reason why smell can be a potent trigger of memories. This side-stepping of the thalamus also causes smells to be powerfully linked with emotions (Van Hartevelt and Kringelbach 1220).

Author Marcel Proust coined the term “involuntary memory” to describe the triggering of a powerful memory by a smell, a taste, or even a sound. A famous anecdote from his book In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) recounts how the taste of a madeleine cake dipped in lime-flower tea takes his main character back to his childhood, with all its colors, smells, and feelings (Van Campen 2).

A Norwegian friend of mine was once stopped in his tracks by such a Proust effect. I was making glögg, a Nordic mulled wine and brandy concoction that is heavily spiced with cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, peeled ginger, orange and cloves. He walked into our kitchen and abruptly stopped, looking completely awestruck, and began recounting the vivid memory he was experiencing: his dad, standing at the stove in their 1970’s kitchen, fishing the bundle of cheesecloth-wrapped spices out of the glögg. He could recall what his dad had been wearing and even the sounds of the party in the next room. This vivid memory was suddenly, powerfully, and involuntarily triggered by a smell.

Memories elicited by smell are more emotional and more evocative than those triggered by images or sounds (Herz and Schooler 27), which may explain the persuasiveness of olfactory cues. Haberman examined the interactive effects of argument strength and olfactory cues on behavior, and concluded that scents in a persuasive advertising context can have a strong influence on consumers’ affective reactions, product evaluations, and purchase behavior (14). In their study, when no scent was present, customers were very critical and showed a negative reaction to weak arguments and a positive reaction to strong arguments, suggesting that customers were engaging in systematic processing when no heuristic cues were present. However, when pleasant scents were present, customers appeared to be more influenced by the scent than by the strengths of the arguments, and weak and strong arguments elicited similar positive reactions. “Customers’ cognitive resources seem to divert away from the presented information and the scent appears to provide sufficient diagnostic information for forming a judgment and making a choice” (15). A similar study demonstrated that customer attitudes toward a store, its products, and their intention to loyally patronize the store, as well as actual purchases, were significantly impacted by scent complexity. Simple or more familiar scents led to more positive responses from customers (i.e., more favorable attitudes, greater loyalty and increased sales). In contrast, more complex or unfamiliar scents had no effect on retail patrons (Haberman et al. 10). Spangenberg et al. found that gender-scent congruity affects consumer behavior. Shoppers in a clothing store scented either with rose maroc, previously determined to appeal to males, or vanilla, previously determined to appeal to females, had a positive impact on that gender. “Each gender evaluated the store and its merchandise more favorably and spent about 50% more time there, bought almost twice as many items and spent more than twice as much money” (1286). Ambient scents, or scents in the environment, improve both recall and recognition of familiar and unfamiliar brands (Morrin and Ratneshwar 10).

Olfactory persuasion does not appear to be limited to shopping behavior. In a museum setting, a noticeable number of visitors slowed down their step or even stopped and spent more time overall in the area where scent was diffused. This suggests that museum and art gallery curators can guide people to certain locations with the help of scents (Seljanko and Tookmaa 20). In a nightclub setting, pleasant scents increased dancing activity, improved the evaluation of the evening, the evaluation of the music, and the mood of the visitors (Shifferstein et al.).

Although research in olfactory persuasion and scent marketing is relatively new, these early studies demonstrate not only that the sense of smell is powerfully linked to memory and emotion, but also to behavior.