Scents affect our moods, our behaviours, our taste buds, and even our spending habits. It’s true, a good smell in a retail store can increase a customer’s intent to purchase by up to 84%. Just ask Nike. 

Research has shown that consumers in the presence of simple scents spend up to 20% more in retail than those without a scent or with a more “complex” scent. 

If you’re looking to increase your consumer spending, consider providing your customers with a more pleasant in-store experience through simple aromatic scents and aroma marketing with Scent Australia.

How Can Scents Provide Better In-Store Experiences?

Have you ever experienced walking past a bakery and upon smelling the freshly baked bread and puffy pastries decided that that is the store you need to be in? 

For those of us who can’t resist the smell of freshly baked goodness, even with the possibility of terrible customer service, the smell alone will probably have us leaving the store with one of everything. 

While bakeries, cafés, and restaurants, naturally have an alluring and yummy scent, other stores, such as retail stores, need to use what’s called “scent marketing” to appeal more to their customers.

Here is how scents can help your store provide a better customer experience:

Fragrances affect human emotions, including anxiety and stress. 

If potential customers come into your store feeling stressed, they’ll be needing something to make them feel better and the act alone of spending money might not do the trick. 

Think of using scents that promote happy and healthy individuals. 

When people are happy in your store, they are more inclined to remember having a positive experience in your store. This promotes customer loyalty, brand recognition, and the opportunity for your customers to purchase more from you because they feel happy to do so. 

Fragrances aren’t just for your customers, they’re for your staff too. 

According to Theresa Molnar from the Sense of Smell Institute, scents can have a positive effect on self-confidence, and physical and cognitive performance. People with confidence attract customers and sales. 

By implementing a mood-boosting scent into your store you could increase customer service and staff productivity by up to 54%. 

It’s like a domino effect, happy staff, happy customers, paying customers, happy management, happy staff. 

Bad odours promote a bad reputation for cleanliness in your business. 

Concerning smells might make your potential customers leave the store before they’ve found what they were looking for. 

Considering research shows that pleasant scents keep buyers hanging around in a store for an average of up to 15 extra minutes, keeping customers around longer can be crucial to making sales in your business. 

If your store is having trouble with nasty or unpleasant odours, you might be interested in specially formulated odour neutralisers to eliminate the stench that’s driving your customers away.  

To create an environment that keeps customers coming back and having memorable in-store experiences, you’ll want to link your scent to positive memories by matching a fragrance to what you’re selling and developing a brand identity. 

Scent Australia has a catalogue with over 10,000 unique fragrances to choose from so your options are boundless. Did you know that, according to Live Science, humans have the power of distinguishing between 1 trillion scents?

Here are some of the most successful scents used in retail to enhance your staff productivity, customer sales, and customer experiences:

Vanilla is often associated with happy childhood memories and promotes a warm and comforting aroma that is also known to reduce anxiety. 

When used as aromatherapy, vanilla has a direct impact on nerves that stimulate calm and peaceful emotions. 

Bringing vanilla into your store supports simplicity and focus among employees and customers alike. 

Lavender is a common scent used in laundry detergent and cleaning substances. It’s a smell that often reminds people of freshly washed clothes, healing, summer and spring, nature, and well-being. 

Studies conducted in France have shown that in some restaurants the use of lavender essential oils in aroma scents resulted in customers spending more time in the restaurant and spending up to 20% more on the waiters’ tips. 

Peppermint has been proven to make people feel more comfortable and at ease in a store. 

Peppermint, along with lavender, is another scent known for its healing properties including reducing headaches, treating colds, lowering muscle pain, and even improving mental function. 

Peppermint is a wonderful fragrance to use for supporting employee productivity, clarity, and focus. 

If your store needs a “pick me up” don’t offer free coffees. Instead, use the sweet-smelling fragrance of ginger. 

Ginger is a stimulating scent that reduces feelings of anxiety, agitation, and fatigue. Pick your customers out of their dark moods and place them in a welcoming and stress-free environment with the refreshing scent of ginger. 

How to Match Your Brand to a Scent

While there are numerous scents to choose from that have an appealing and desirable effect on customer experiences, your brand needs its very own signature fragrance to appeal to your target audience. 

It just makes scents!

Does your store mainly target female or feminine consumers?

Some stores are more feminine than others, like lingerie stores for example. Feminine scents like lavender, rose, clary sage, jasmine, and magnolia support feminine energy. 

Do you have a store that attracts more men than women?

Retail stores that mainly sell clothing and items for men might be keener to delve into masculine scents like bergamot, birch, clove, and ginger, that support masculine energy. 

Make Scent Marketing Work for Your Business

Make scent marketing work for you and the success of your business by getting in touch with the team at Scent Australia today to enquire further about signature scents, our range of aromatherapy oils, and how using essential oils to improve your customer’s retail experience can increase your brand awareness.

Scent Australia can help you to elevate the room and make your scent relatable by matching scents to your brand. Our team can talk you through the process and discuss the best diffusing methods for your store. 

Fragrance marketing can have a huge impact on increasing your sales and customer loyalty, after all, Business News Daily has reported that scents are “powerful motivators” when it comes to spending.