-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email This article was originally published on The Conversation . Imagine walking down the aisle of your local grocery store. The scent of mixed herbs catches your attention, mentally transporting you to a kitchen filled with the aroma of your favorite home-cooked meal.
Suddenly, you're craving hearty minestrone soup or yearning for homemade beef lasagna. In an instant, your plans for dinner – and your shopping list – change. This sensory experience is not a new phenomenon.
Using scent to sell in retail stores is a well-established strategy. But our new research has found introducing a herbal scent (such as thyme, rosemary, oregano and basil) in supermarkets can encourage shoppers to select and purchase more wholesome foods. Beyond general smells that come from the products, supermarkets often use artificial scent strategies, such as diffusing grapefruit in the produce section , chocolate in the confectionery aisle , rosemary focaccia by the bakery, and baked cheesecake in the aisles to boost sales.
Previous research has found diffusing a chocolate scent in a bookstore increased interest in romance books and cookbooks. And natural scents in a store boosted spending on products with fewer artificial or synthetic characteristics. Scents such as rose maroc (considered "masculine") and vanilla (deemed "feminine") have been shown to influence shopping behaviors toward gender-specific clothing.
Understanding the influence of certain smells isn'.
