What the research shows

We build on research we can retell, and we say just as plainly where it runs out.

Evidence

Below are seven studies that touch the core of our work, each with its year and its subject.

A few of them are old, and that is no accident: field work in real stores is scarce and often decades old. Read them as a direction, not as a guarantee. The most recent, from 2020, sets dozens of experiments side by side and gives an average rather than a single outlier.

The studies

What has actually been measured.

Milliman, 1982: the tempo of the music

Over nine weeks Milliman alternated slow-tempo and fast-tempo music in a supermarket and measured what happened. At the slow tempo shoppers moved through the store more slowly and turnover was roughly 38 per cent higher than at the fast tempo. It is a field experiment in a single store, so that figure is a direction rather than a law. What stands is the direction itself: the tempo of the music influences how fast people move through a space.

Milliman, R. E. (1982). Using background music to affect the behavior of supermarket shoppers. Journal of Marketing, 46(3), 86-91.

Mattila and Wirtz, 2001: congruence

In a real store Mattila and Wirtz combined scent and music that did or did not match in how much energy they gave: a calm scent with a slow tempo, a lively scent with a faster one. With the matched pairings shoppers rated the store more positively, felt more inclined to stay and look around, made impulse purchases more often and were more satisfied. With a mismatched pairing the verdict came out lower. The lesson is not that more stimulation is better, but that stimuli which contradict each other cancel out the effect.

Mattila, A. S., & Wirtz, J. (2001). Congruency of scent and music as a driver of in-store evaluations and behavior. Journal of Retailing, 77(2), 273-289.

Herz, 2004: scent and memory

Herz asked museum visitors to recall memories prompted by a scent, an image and a sound of the same thing, such as a campfire or freshly cut grass. The memories a scent brought back were more emotional and gave a stronger sense of being back in that moment. They were not sharper or more detailed. In a brain scan she saw more activity in the amygdala, the area that processes emotion, when a scent carried a personal memory. These are small groups of participants, so be careful translating it to a lobby. It does explain why a guest remembers a scent and not the colour of the floor.

Herz, R. S. (2004). A naturalistic analysis of autobiographical memories triggered by olfactory, visual and auditory stimuli. Chemical Senses, 29(3), 217-224. Herz, R. S., Eliassen, J., Beland, S., & Souza, T. (2004). Neuroimaging evidence for the emotional potency of odor-evoked memory. Neuropsychologia, 42(3), 371-378.

Spangenberg, Grohmann and Sprott, 2005: scent and music together

In a simulated store the researchers paired a Christmas scent with Christmas music and with music that did not belong to it. With Christmas music playing, shoppers rated the store and their visit more positively once the scent was added. With other music playing, the same scent actually pulled down their verdict on the store and its range. It is precisely about the combination we deliver: a good scent with the wrong music is worse than no scent.

Spangenberg, E. R., Grohmann, B., & Sprott, D. E. (2005). It’s beginning to smell (and sound) a lot like Christmas: The interactive effects of ambient scent and music in a retail setting. Journal of Business Research, 58(11), 1583-1589.

Spence, 2011: senses that belong together

Spence reviewed the research on the links people make between the senses. For almost everyone a high note goes with something bright, small and high, a low note with something dark, large and heavy. These links are strikingly similar from person to person and help the brain decide which stimuli belong together. It is a review of mostly laboratory work and says nothing about turnover. It does explain why a scent and a piece of music can feel like one whole, or grate against each other.

Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73(4), 971-995.

Krishna, 2012: the overview of the field

Krishna brought the field of sensory marketing together in a single review article: how sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch shape our judgement of a product or a space. It is not a field experiment but an ordering of what had been found until then, with the weak spots named alongside. Anyone wanting to know how the separate findings relate to one another starts here. We use it as a map, not as proof.

Krishna, A. (2012). An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22(3), 332-351.

Roschk and Hosseinpour, 2020: what scent does on average

Roschk and Hosseinpour set 64 experiments with a pleasant scent in a space side by side, together 671 measured effects. With scent, visitor responses were on average three to fifteen per cent higher than without. In an average setting spending is estimated to rise by three per cent, and by up to 23 per cent under the most favourable conditions. Scent works better the more it fits the place, the simpler it is built and the more familiar it feels. In services, such as restaurants and spas, the effect is larger than in shops. It is the broadest review on this list and also the most sober: an average, not a promise for one building.

Roschk, H., & Hosseinpour, M. (2020). Pleasant ambient scents: A meta-analysis of customer responses and situational contingencies. Journal of Marketing, 84(1), 125-145.

Limits

Where the research stops.

And then where the evidence is thin. Much of this field work comes from a single store or a single laboratory and has rarely been repeated at scale. A figure such as 38 per cent belongs to that one set-up, that one audience and that one moment; it does not belong to your building. Research that finds nothing is also published less often, so the average in the literature probably sits higher than reality. The effect differs sharply by sector and by audience, and it has an optimum: too much scent works against you. And there is one claim we never make. That scent makes people perform better or improves their health cannot be substantiated. In her 2009 review Herz shows that such effects stem mainly from what people expect and have previously experienced with a scent, not from the scent itself. Anyone promising you that is going further than the research allows.

Herz, R. S. (2009). Aromatherapy facts and fictions: A scientific analysis of olfactory effects on mood, physiology and behavior. International Journal of Neuroscience, 119(2), 263-290.

What it means

What we do with it.

What this means for a client is this. The best-supported ground is precisely the ground we work on: atmosphere, mood, comfort, how long people stay and how they rate a place. The surest gain lies not in a stronger scent but in coherence: scent, music and image pointing the same way. That is also why we let the four layers come from one translation of the place rather than tuning them to each other afterwards. So we put no percentage in the quotation and promise no rise in turnover. What we do is measure the effect in your own place: a reading before the start and an evaluation afterwards, so you see what happens in your place rather than what happened in an American supermarket in 1982.

Measuring beats promising.

What happens in your place we measure in your place: a reading before the start and an evaluation after.

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