Do you smell what I smell? More importantly, do you smell what your customers smell? And just what do they smell, anyway? Research shows that a nice-smelling store may encourage people to linger and purchase. Are your customers lingering or sniffing and heading out the door?In one study, Eric Spangenberg, a consumer psychologist and dean of the College of Business and Economics at Washington State University in Pullman, and his colleagues carried out an experiment in a local retail clothing store. They discovered that when “feminine scents”, like vanilla, were used, sales of women’s clothes doubled; as did men’s clothes when scents like rose maroc were diffused.

It’s called “ambient scent” and it is everywhere. Katy Perry’s “California Dreams” tour incorporated the scent of cotton candy into her concerts for a fun smell-o-vision effect. Goodwill stores in Wisconsin and Illinois are infusing their stores with the scent of orange and honeysuckle to encourage customers to linger and buy. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather smell oranges and honeysuckle than dusty clothes or even cleaning supplies. This ambient scent business is on the rise so much so that there are entire companies, such as Prolitec, devoted to helping businesses boost sales through smell.

How it works is like this: of the five senses, smell is thought to be most closely linked to emotion because the brain’s olfactory bulb, which detects odors, fast-tracks signals to the limbic system, which links emotion to memories. Simplified: scents = emotions. Scent branding is when a scent is associated with a certain product or store and when that scent is smelled, it evokes the pleasurable memory associated with that product or store. For instance, there is a store where I like to shop and it always has the scent of raw silk in it. Whenever I am out and happen to smell raw silk, I immediately think of that retail store and the clothes that I love from that store.

So take out your sniffer and take a whiff of your store. What do you smell? Since you are there almost every day you may have gotten used to what your store smells like and possibly cannot detect anything significant. Bring in a few people who aren’t in your store very often and ask what they smell and what emotions or feelings the scent of your store evokes. Take their input and go from there. What scent do you want associated with your store? Just keep in mind that some people are hypersensitive to strong scents and may have a negative reaction, such as headaches, so don’t overpower everyone with the ambient scent. A little ambient scent can go a long way.