There`s more evidence of the infiltration of aroma manipulation in our lives. Retailers are experimenting with smells intended to spur spending.
”Stores have manipulated everything else-the music, the lighting, the color, the layout-and so this is the new thing to play with,” says Susan Knasko, an environmental psychologist at the Monell Chemical Sense Center, a Philadelphia smell and taste research organization.
Marketers are getting wily, flirting with specially engineered scents.
Some examples:
– A ”new car” fragrance intended to make used cars more appealing.
– Mint-scented money in automated teller machines to induce frequent use. Not all odor experiments are working. The Knot Shop, a Chicago-based chain of tie stores, pumped the smell of leather, oak and pipe tobacco into five stores for about a year. ”The idea is that most women buy neckwear,”
J`Amy Owns, a consultant for the chain. ”And so we wanted the stores to smell like the ideal man.”
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But Gene Silverberg, president of the stores` parent company, recently halted the fragrance infusions.
”Frankly,” he said, ”I didn`t find it made enough difference.”