Smells like marketing

You may wonder if aromatherapy really works, but marketers seem pretty certain that ambient odour equals increase in sales

I am sure I am not the only one. Every time I walk past a Fabindia store I have this great urge to step inside. Maybe it is the kind of clothes or all the organic foodstuff they stock, I can't seem to walk away. I tell myself I'll browse and scoot, but I can hardly ever walk out empty handed. I blame it on my lack of discretion, self-control etcetera until one day I read this, well, random piece of information.

I am told companies like Fabindia or Woodland have actually invested huge sums on developing "signature fragrances" that are sprayed in and around the stores to draw consumers in. We don't have independent verification from Fabindia but a Woodland executive tells us that the company has noticed a significant increase in footfalls since it developed what he calls the "Woodland brand fragrance" and began spraying it in the aisle area of its stores across the world, including India.
 

The ability of odours to stir emotions and trigger memories has had a long literary pedigree and recent years have seen growing interest in the ability of ambient odour to influence consumer behaviour - from the use of scent to make store ambience pleasant and welcoming to the more deliberate marketing ploy of using odour to manipulate behaviour by appealing to consumers at a sub-conscious level. In fact, if I go by some of the estimates I found by Googling alone, five years ago, roughly 40 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies took recourse to sensory marketing in some form as part of the exercise to engage with consumers. By 2015, experts aver, roughly 70 per cent of Fortune 500 companies would be using sensory marketing to stay in the race or get ahead.

Without doubt smell is an important factor in the sensory evaluation of products, but if you really think about it, the use of smell as a marketing tool is not exactly new. Car salesmen in markets such as Japan have been known to splash the interiors of their cars with the scent of leather, and one American bank is said to have even sprayed its cheque books with rose oil. Singapore Airlines, it has been widely documented, is driven by an aim to establish a truly sensory brand experience encompassing much more than what the passengers could see or hear. Martin Lindström writes in Brand Sense: How to Build Powerful Brands Through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight that the sensory branding of Singapore Airlines reached its zenith in 2000 when it introduced a signature company perfume for the hot towels to be served before take-off and to be worn by its flight attendants. This patented aroma, Stefan Floridian Waters, has now become the airlines' trademark fragrance and is used to complement the branding of Singapore Airlines.

Closer home, our detergent makers are hawking products with the aroma of jasmine, of lemon and everything that you can possibly relate with freshness. But the question is: does a great smelling interior make consumers rate the store environment as positive, stay in the store far longer and, above all, buy more?

Marketing opinion seems to be overwhelmingly in favour of those conclusions. Woodland's vice-president in India Amol Dhillon even says that his consumers are so impressed with its trademark fragrance that they want it to be sprayed on their leather jackets and apparel as well. Given its popular demand, the company plans to launch the Woodland fragrance as a stand-alone product line in India early next year.

Indian retailers may have cottoned on to the trend only recently, but as organised retail grows, this thing about sensory marketing will only grow in momentum. Woodland is already using its signature leather fragrance at its various corporate offices as a branding exercise. Then we have Forest Essentials, an Ayurveda-based cosmetics company, that has crafted its own lemongrass fragrance to be sprayed in its stores to make consumers feel cool and comfortable inside. The company says versions of this fragrance are now being supplied to select hospitals and hotels in India.

Your friendly neighbourhood retailer till tell you he always knew a nice fragrance would do nice things to his sales figures - even before neuromarketing had become a buzzword - and that's the reason he uses incense sticks or "dhoop" to offer a sense of calm and balance when his customer walked in. What is new is that that with scientific consumer research in the retail business, this phenomenon has been taken to a whole new level.

I always knew it was not simply about my lack of self control.