Christmas retailers enjoy simple smell of success

Retailers will use common strategies or tricks to separate you from your holiday dollars, from doorbusters and discounts to Christmas displays and Santa’s sleigh. But one oversight could drive shoppers to distraction and push you back out the door with a full wallet.

It’s a smell.

At Washington State University, in Pullman, Wash. researchers have been working for years to come up with the best smell to inspire shoppers. Eric Spangenberg, marketing professor and Dean of the College of Business finds that a combination of smells or complex odors can confuse or distract shoppers.

“That actually is probably one of the most likely, sort of, blunders that a retailer will make is to have too complex of a scent environment,” said Spangenberg. “They could intend to have it smell like Christmas but there are too many products in there that are overwhelming the Christmas smell.”

WSU followed up on Swiss researchers who exposed hundreds of shoppers to various smells, some simple and some complex. The Swiss study found that sales rose when a simple scent was in the air, such as orange, pine or cinnamon.

The WSU researchers asked undergraduate students to solve word problems while exposed to varying scents. Their findings, published in the ‘Journal of Retailing,’ found that study participants solved more problems more quickly when exposed to a simple scent.

“People only have so much processing capacity and if a scent is too complex, they’re dedicating processing capacity, even unbeknownst to them, dedicating it to piecing together what that scent is, rather than actually shopping or attending to their work,” said Spangenberg.

For some stores, putting out the right smell is easy. Starbucks smells like coffee and it’s hard to make a mistake with Cinnabon. Other stores must be careful with their odors. Spangenberg says congruent smells are critical, meaning that stores that cater to men must have a manly smell. Leave it to women’s stores to smell like perfume.

“If you were to flip-flop those, which we actually did in a series of studies several years ago that we published in the journal ‘Business Research,’ we found that men don’t buy when it smells like women in their store and vice-versa,” explained Spangenberg.

To encourage spending, retailers must understand that smells impact shoppers on an unconscious level.
“The takeaway is keep it simple,” said Spangenberg. “As long as it’s pleasant and congruent, the more effective it’s going to be.”