The sent of using scent
I. e. if a consumer is asked:
- What does this scent reminds you of or what does this smell of?
- Answer: a brand name
In theory and according to associative learning practice, this concept can be compound in following equation:
A+ (Brand + Brand Association) + B (unknown odour) = B+ (Unknown odour + brand association)
The equation is supported by theory concerning olfactory memory. In olfactory, explicit memory is about making associative meaning to odour (Olsson, Mats 2003) Explicit memory of odour can be used to process information and compare encountered odours. Evidence of explicit olfactory memory is seen through behaviours in tasks that evolved a working memory component.
Further the location of the olfactory bulb with its close access to the amygdala, which is responsible for associative learning and the wiring between odour and memory. As discussed in earlier chapters, is triggered by a conditioned response, which is set off when a scent first is experienced. The conditioned response is in fact interesting in the discussion, concerning the prospect of odour brandownership.
The theory is interesting to develop further and test clinically, if it is possible to transfer the brand association to an odour – or the other way around and by then reinforce the brand recognition.
Here it can be argued, that it is necessary that the brand, which association is transferred is well known.
The relationship between odour naming (thought to reflect semantic memory) and odour recognition memory (thought to reflect episodic memory), we have seen from previously common tests, that explicit odour memory on odour identification and odour recognition have been the most tested.
If a new odour is first experienced in combination with a shopping experience or in connection with a brand, a logo or a branded product, it may be possible to prime the odour and the brand name in the way as we learn new knowledge and in the same manners as how we learn to recognize friends, colleagues and brands.
Or is it more likely that when first a new scent is experienced, we will connect it with a previous memory and not be able to connect the odour with a new name or environment?
According to Rachel Hertz (2005) odour novelty prior to associative learning is important because if an odour is already familiar, it may have been associated to past experiences.
It is hypothesized that odour hedonic perception and odour- related behaviour results from a learned association between an odour and the emotional context in, which that odour was first, encountered.
The process is proposed to operate and produce effects as follows: (1) the emotion paired with an odour becomes associated to the odour and imbues it with meaning, thus influencing hedonic perception; and (2) an odour can elicit the emotion associated with its prior exposure and have a general impact on mood and mood-related behaviour. (Rachel Hertz, 2005)
In sum, past studies and current empirical work provide strong experimental evidence to support the hypothesis that odour hedonic perception and odour-related behaviour result from a learned association between an odour and the emotional context in which the odour was first encountered.
Emotions vs. feelings
When discussing emotions, it is important to distinguish the differences between feelings and emotions. An emotion is an organism’s expression of an inner bodily state - a bodily response to an event and which has a mechanical stimulus-response basis, typically without awareness (Bernard J Baars, 2010) where feelings can be seen as an organism’s experience of being in a certain emotional state, typically with awareness.
It is therefore interesting to focus on consumers’ emotions, since the emotion is working unconsciously and therefore is a true statement of consumers’ emotions towards brand preference before the very act of thinking about the response distorts it.
When discussing emotions with regards to communication and advertisings (Rossiter and Percy, 1987), argues it is foolish to expect a single emotion to be operating throughout the processing of advertising. What is needed for most brand attitude effects in advertising is a dynamic sequence of emotions. This is especially true of low involvement advertisings when negative emotions can be involved. As discussed in previous chapters, odours have the ability to bring you back to a distant but vivid memory and emotion, which theoretically makes odour a powerful tool in marketing.
The way information is evaluated in the extent of which we attach positive or
negative emotions to something, is to a large extent an unconscious product of learning. Much learning involves positive emotion and can proceed independently of conscious cognition, and this distinction is critical in the relationship between emotion and motivation (Rossiter and Percy 1987).
Since emotions are strong mediators of how consumers process messages, understanding and modelling cognitive responses to advertisings is challenging in marketing. In previously research, researchers have relied on consumers’ ability to report how they feel towards a particularly advertisement either in focus groups, interviews or surveys. Unfortunately these methods have some limitations due to the facts that the brain roughly works on two levels; unconscious – emotions and conscious – feelings (Baars, J. Bernard et al., 2010) The tests persons are able to describe their own cognitive process, which is known to have subconscious components. Other factors that distort the reporting of the test persons are their feelings, their incentives or peer pressure.
Information which, is explicitly remembered includes for example ad slogans, product benefits, and website addresses. Implicit memory however might come into play when other stimuli in the environment remind you of something. So in other words: Explicit memory involves consciously retrievable facts, while implicit memory involves unconscious retention.
One examples of the importance of implicit memory is e.g. :(1) a consumer might only recall a brand of a e.g. perfume from a television ad when he or she discovers it while browsing in a store; (2) or the consumer might develop an unconscious affinity for a certain brand despite not knowing specific facts about it.
In this challenging context of asking the consumer directly about how they ‘feel’
about a product can be very blurred and not trustworthy. The use of neuromarketing in this context offers alternatives to probe the consumers’ brains in order to gain a valuable insight on the subconscious processes explaining why advertisements / messages eventually succeed or fail.
Using neuromarketing techniques to test the advertisings and marketing strategies to see what the costumers are taking notions of, eye tracking and
electroencephalography (EEG), could be an opportunity to track the costumers’
reaction.
With the eye tacking method, consumers/ volunteers can be exposed to various packages, odourants, ads, images, messages, and so forth. It is then measured what they deem to be the three key parameters: attention, emotional engagement, and memory retention.
Besides eye tracking, EEG, which is a brain scan that enables researchers to monitor electrical impulses within the brain, could be used measure emotions towards the advertisings or odourants.
What is interesting is seeing where emotional engagement overlaps with conscious attention. Once data from eye tracking is gathered, the advertisings’ can be overlaid with two sets of circles. One indicating where our eyes go, two, pupil dilation indicating the part of the ad volunteers’ is thinking about.
The EEG helps measure the volunteers’ electrical impulses, when thinking about something the emotional levels flatline, also known as a “disconnect”, because without emotion, the tests persons are unlikely to remember it, as discussed above.
Often this can be a logo or something we can recall, but have no emotional connection to.
The emotional levels flatline towards logos or brands with no emotional connection to it is interesting when discussing the ability of combining the logo with an odourant, which we know may cause strong emotional reactions.
Emotional choice
The emotional context when experiencing certain odorants is interesting when combining marketing and consumer behaviour - and choice, because emotions giving rise to unconscious emotions, commonly occurring with semi-complex choices. In the case of the semi-complex choices it is possible that the emotional response give rise to some cognitive activity of which, the individual will never become aware; for instance in the choices that involve some cognitively stored information about preference between different brands. Here odour is an interesting influencer since odour often is combined with vivid memories and emotions.
The experimental evidence for hedonic perception, which is a result from a learned association, is the founding pillar in our research and test concerning the possibility of odour brand ownership.
Cultural aspects of olfactory
That the sense of smell is an important factor in our everyday lives does not come as a surprise for most people. But what is surprisingly interesting is how much our ability to smell also has a great control over our emotions and how a lack of the ability to smell can damage some valuable pleasures in life. This important fact of the sense of smell is the main reason why the marketers increasingly are focusing on how the sense of smell can be incorporated in a marketing strategy.
This following section focuses on factors and determinants that have significant influence on the performance of the olfactory perception. Furthermore, it presents an overall cultural context to olfactory perceptions. We discuss how culture, age and sex have crucial influence in this matter and how historical scent rituals are important for the understanding of the modern scent perspectives.
Introducing perfume
The history of fragrance dates back more than 4000 years when the mesopotamiens used incense as the first form of perfume. (Schilling, Boris 2010).
The word perfume comes from the Latin phrase, "per" meaning "through" and
"fumus" meaning smoke." The French later gave the name perfume to the pleasant smells from burning incense. (Schilling, Boris 2010).
The first aromatics was kindled as incense to gods and ancestors, here incenses like cedar of Lebanon, resinous woods of pine, cypress and fir tree were burned in public ceremonies as wells as private devotions. Further the Egyptians developed the art of perfumery not only as a part of religious rituals but also as palms on ointments for personal use. (Schilling, Boris 2010).
Around 1370 perfume began to be used for more than just medicinal benefits. It developed into a product that was favoured due to its pleasant smell, which beneficially masked body odours. Oils of flowers or herbs were mixed with water to
produce scent, and this combination was used until the first mixture of alcohol solution with fragrant oils was made in 1370 (www.fragrancex.com)18.
The use of synthetic fragrance ingredients marked the beginning of the modern perfumery at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris. (Schilling, Boris 2010).
One of the first perfume houses was launched in Paris in 1775, which launched
‘Fougère Royal’ created by Paul Parquet in 1882. Later the perfumer Francois Coty created the synthetic fragrance ‘Chypre’ which contained synthetic quiolines, which provided a leathery note to the product. In 1919 Jacques Guerlain used synthesis of vanillin in his creation of ‘Shalimar’.
Today we now the Perfume house Guerlain as one of the oldest in the world. Guerlain has created some of the well-know fragrances including the iconic classics
‘Mitsouko’, ‘Shalimar’ (as mentioned above) and L’Heur Bleue. Today the house of Guerlain still is one of the leading perfume houses with a large customer base. From the research and the synthetic work and investigation of structure-activity and odour-relationship we today have a group of notes in perfumery like ‘fruity’, ‘marine’,
‘green’, ‘floral’, ‘spicy’, ‘woody’, ‘amber’ and ‘musk’ who create the basis in perfume making. (Schilling,Boris 2010)
The meaning of a scent
As earlier chapters argue (Chapter 3), odour is very powerful and can affect us on a physical, psychological and social level. Odours and aromas surround us all the time without us being consciously aware of it. It is first when our ability to smell is being weakened that we begin to realize the important role that olfactory plays in our everyday-life and in our well-being. A man who lost his sense of smell because he has had a head injury explained that loosing the sense of smell had changed his life completely. For him it was like he was struck blind, and his life lost a great deal of its savour. “ You smell people, you smell books, you smell the city you smell the spring – maybe not consciously, but as a rich unconscious background to everything else. My whole world was suddenly radically poorer.” (Classen, Constance et al. 1994, p. 1) One woman who had lost her sense of smell and then briefly regained it explained that while she could not smell, she felt like she missed out on some very essential
18 http://www.fragrancex.com/fragrance-information/chronology-of-perfume-scents.aspx
smells in the everyday life such as; people, the air, her house and her skin. Smell might not be crucial for our survival, but it becomes a more dangerous if we loose the olfactory warning system and the ability to smell, e.g. leaking gas, bad food or smoke from a fire. That is why the sense of smell is a more important part of our life than most of us realize. (Goldstein, E. Bruce, 2009 )
The perception of smell consists not only of the impression of the odours themselves but as a connection between the experience and the emotions associated with them. A survey, conducted by Montreals Concordia University, asked 270 students and professors what role they believed that smell had in their lives. When they were asked what their favourite smell were, some said ´the smell of babies´, or ´freshly mown lawn´ and ´homemade bread´ some even said that the smell of Olympic Stadium´,
´dogs` and `gasoline`. When they were asked what they disliked some answered
`smelly men on the bus`, `cigarette smoke` and `raw meat`. Some even said that perfumes gave them physical discomfort such as headache and nausea and that perfume obscured the natural odours and ruined senses in general. (Classen, Constance et al. 1994)
Odours are essential cues in social bonding. An experiment proved that infants recognise the odours of their mother right after the birth, and adults can identify their children or spouses only by scent. The experiment revealed that most of the participants would probably never have given much thought to odour and how it is an important factor when identifying family members before they were involved in the test. The experiment proved that odours are recorded even when they are not consciously considered. (Classen, Constance et al. 1994)
Olfactory talent -‐ the nose knows a lot
Olfactory sensitivity differs a lot from person to person. One can be extremely sensitive to the bad smell of a garbage can, while others can cruise untroubled by and not be bothered by the smell. Olfactory sensitivity is just one dimension of humans overall smell talent. Other dimensions include awareness of odours and the ability to identify them and discriminate amongst them. What is important in this matter is that people are not accurate judges of their own ability to smell. (Gilbert, Avery 2008) Surveys have shown that when people are asked to rate their own ability, most people say that they are above average. Smell tests are used to impartially assess someone’s
ability to smell. These tests come in two types; one asks you to put a name to the odour and the other asks you to detect lower concentrations of the odour. These tests have been available for commercial use in many years, but have just recently formally been recognised for medical use. The best score in a smell test is “normal”.
There are no tests that rate one as an excellent “smeller”. In fact, there are no intelligent terms that would refer to a “smell genius” like having a low or high IQ or having strong or weakened vision. (Gilbert, Avery 2008)
Smell tests are especially made to identify people with dysfunctional noses. People that are unable to smell anything are at the lowest end of the scale. These people suffer from anosmia, a technical term for complete smell loss. One step up of the scale is hyposmia, which can be mild or hard. In both cases, the most frequent cause is infectious deceases, e.g. severe colds, flu and head injuries.
Men and women also have different smell ability. This has been confirmed many times through several methods and in different cultures around the world. In general, women detect odours at a lower concentration level and are therefore better at identifying them by name. Several studies have shown that there is a small gender difference in the nose. The brain structures that are related to odour perception vary in size and cellular architecture between men and women.
That women’s smell is superior is partly because women have a better verbal fluency and that verbal skills boost performance in test of odour memory and odour identification. Another factor is hormones. Women are especially sensitive towards smell under their menstrual cycle. Hormones interact in complex ways with the cognitive figures and produce one of the most dramatic olfactory gender differences ever observed in a lab. The gender differences are already present at birth. Baby girls are in general more interested in novel odours and spend more time smelling them than baby boys. If we look back in history, an explanation for this factor could be detected. In the hunter-gatherers age it were the females who gathered fruit and vegetables and therefore needed a good sense of smell to judge the maturity and wellbeing of the food. (Gilbert, Avery 2008)
Age also has a great influence on the olfactory performance. Already from the early forties the first signs of a smell-decline are detected and accelerate in the sixties and seventies. But it is not for all odours that the olfactory performance decline. Rose and
banana are examples of odours that are easily perceived until people are in the seventies. An odour like mercaptans, a natural-gas warning odour, has shown to have a decreasing perception among people in the fifties. (Gilbert, Avery 2008)
When changes are occurring in the senses of smell behavioural implications for the proper ingestion of food, safety and personal hygiene occur. Elderly people with reduced olfactory perception may not be aware of their lack of personal hygiene and the unpleasant body odours. Some even start to use so much perfume that it is directly offensive to those around them. But these older adults are unaware of this behaviour because they have reduced olfactory perception. (Saxon, Sue V. et al. 2010)
Culture influence
Culture can have a determining role in the area of sensory marketing. The visual system is though considered dominant because it plays a significant role in many daily activities. We see an increasing importance in the sense of vision in today’s western societies mostly because of the products that are created such as books, television and computers (McLuhan,1961) .
These products require a great input from the visual sense. McLuhan (1961) believed that Europeans and North Americans live in a visual mode, while native Africans and other non-literate societies the auditory sense is the dominant one. (Fenko, Otten et al.)
When it comes to olfactory, aromas and spices each preference is dominated by different cultures. In the book “ What the Nose Knows” (Gilbert, Avery 2008) the author explains how smell prejudice can occur in various cultures. This is especially the case when it comes to food aromas. All cultures use different kinds of spices, some smells or taste more badly than others, but each culture has learned to live with it and therefore it becomes a part of their belonging.
The book gives an example of a Norwegian dish that both smells and taste badly, called lutefisk. It is a very popular specialty in Norway and in Norwegian- populated areas of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Lutefisk is an air-dried codfish that has been in water for days and then in a solution of caustic lie for another couple of days till it ends up as swollen jellylike mass of smelly fish flesh. The Norwegians already know that this specialty is smelly and that it may seem disgusting for other cultures. Despite
that, lutefisk is highly popular with the Norwegians and they have made it a “badge”
of belonging.
The North Americans, in particular, have in recent years started to open their eyes up to new sensory cultures. They have become more open to new foods, flavours and smells than ever before. Kraft Food, an American food and beverage company best known for its traditional “macaroni and cheese”, have recently introduced a Mango Chipotle marinade. A great leap away from the traditional North American flavour to a more exotic Asian style flavour. (Gilbert, Avery 2008)
Back in the 60´s, a study was conducted in Britain where adult respondents should provide hedonic ratings to a battery of common odours. Included in the study was the odour methyl salicylate also called wintergreen. The same study was conducted in the United States ten years later. The odour, wintergreen, was given one of the lowest pleasantness ratings, but in the U.S. study the same odour was given the highest pleasantness rating (Herz, Rachel S., 2011).
The reason for this big difference was because the odour wintergreen had different associations for each of the two countries. In Britain the odour was associated with a special kind of pain medicine that was popular during World War 2, which for the British participants was something they did not want to be reminded of. In the U.S.
wintergreen is a sweet candy smell that had only positive associations for the American participants. This study confirmed that the key to olfactory associative learning is the experience that occurs when the odour is first perceived and is especially the case where the experience had an emotional implication. (Herz, Rachel S., 2011)
Odours in rituals
Odours are often used in rituals where they act as a power to please and attract those to whom the scent is directed. They create meaning for people and serve to express different domains of existence.
Cultures all over the world have different rituals and different ways in which they use odours in their rituals. In Ethiopia, for instance, the cattle-raising Dassanetch find the odour of cattle very attractive. It is a scent that carries notions of fertility and social status for them. The women rub their hands, shoulders and breasts in butter to become more attractive to the men by this scent of butter. The Dogon of Mali are