I am alarmed, but not entirely surprised to read that cunning shopkeepers
are beginning to use smells to boost the sales of their wares. I just wonder
why they haven’t been doing it for years.
Some have, of course. When I was a lad, High Street grocery stores of the
better, or, at any rate, more expensive kind, used to have great
coffee-grinding machines in their windows. They were grand structures,
commonly enamelled red with gold piping. At the top was a large glass jar to
hold the newly roasted beans. And then came the grinding bit, ennobled by a
fascinatingly naked belt drive connecting a big wheel on the shaft of the
mill to a little wheel on the shaft of a hefty electric motor at the
instrument’s base. And there was a slide-in-slide-out catch-pan to collect
the freshly minted grounds so that they could be poured into pleasant paper
bags of a kind which we now only see holding flour and sugar.
It was good fun to watch and, better still, wonderful to smell. The aroma of
the new-ground coffee spilt out onto the pavement and must have tempted many
a passer-by with a shilling or two in their pouch to step inside a grocery
store they might otherwise have ignored.
Bakers’ shops – real ones where the loaves, rolls, cakes and tarts were made
on the premises instead of being imported from some distant automated
production line – wafted out the same aromatic bait.
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But these seductive scents were a fortunate and fortuitous by-product of the
honest toil of the tradesfolk concerned, and not a sales gimmick dreamed up
by foxy marketing consultants. Now, however according to a report in a
recent issue of The Sunday Times, all manner of smells are being injected
into the air of shops because the experts have discovered that the right
kind of aroma can significantly boost the urge to buy.
It would seem that the technique was pioneered in Japan, where it has become
big business, and that it is being tested in Britain by a company called
Marketing Aromatics which is carrying out ‘secret’ trials in over 100
British stores. Apparently supermarkets in this country cottoned on to the
wheeze (at least in principle) some time ago. Realising that they had a
valuable commodity in the aromas created by their in-store bakeries they
have been blowing the bakery air down the aisles to whet their customers’
appetites for all the tasty morsels on show. But this no more than an
intelligent exploitation of an ancient and widely recognised High Street
phenomenon.
The new smell-sell technology takes matters a good deal further by
introducing scents which have nothing to do with the actual goings on
within the store concerned, but which are designed to excite and heighten
interest in the goods on sale. Thus the odour of coconut oil in travel
agencies to get the punters eager for fun in the sun, the fragrance of cut
grass in greengrocers to give customers that summery feeling and a hankering
for fruits and salads to be enjoyed alfresco, and in car showrooms the whiff
of leather to suggest a quality the vehicles on offer probably don’t
possess.
The scientific adviser to Marketing Aromatics is a George Dodd, director of
the Institute of Olfactory Research at the University of Warwick’s science
park. According to The Sunday Times, he believes that smell can affect
people’s moods and emotions. ‘It is a very exciting time. Smells have
enormous potential to influence behaviour.’ Well, as I’ve already said, I’m
just surprised that the power of smells has not been heavily exploited for
years. Smell is a sense which has long been known to play a central and
essential role in the lives and activities of all manner of birds and
beasts.
Salmon return to the precise patch of fresh water in which they began life,
after spending years many miles away at sea. They can do this because the
brains of the baby fish are imprinted by the unique cocktail of odours
generated by the animal, vegetable and mineral components of their nursery.
Mouthbreeders – fish which hold eggs and young in their mouths – are able to
distinguish their own offspring from those of their fishy mates by smell.
Agitated fish (and tadpoles) produce a warning odour or Schreckstoff
(‘fright substance’) which, even at extremely low concentrations, causes
members of their own species to flee the danger area. Almost all mammals use
marking scents to define their private plots. Sheep recognise members of
their own flock by smell. When male rhesus monkeys have their nostrils
blocked they show no interest in females on heat. And so on.
The part of the brain that handles signals from the smell nerves has a
powerful influence over the activity of the autonomic nervous system and
over the emotions. And what about we human beings? G. K. Chesterton
celebrated The Noselessness of Man in immortal verse, and we may, indeed,
have come to depend rather less upon the sense of smell than most of our
fellow living creatures on this Earth. But we are almost certainly
influenced by the messages picked up by our noses to a far greater extent
than we appreciate.
Strawberries require some 35 chemicals for their glorious aroma. If a berry
is crushed a few of those alter form, and the human nose easily detects the
consequent and subtle change of scent. Not bad for an organ which we tend to
regard as obsolete.
So never mind about using smells to boost the sales of biscuits. I look
forward to the day when we can spray sweet pacifying scents over
battlefields in place of nerve gas and napalm.
Donald Gould is a former editor of New Scientist.
