An added smell makes your brand stick

If a brand want people to remember what it stands for, it should add a special smell to the item! Research, presented on Neurosciencemarketing.com´s blog shows that if the product smells - especially of something that is relevant - people will keep the product in their memory for longer. Which we all know is great for selling more. 

From the researchers: “Product scent may be particularly effective at enhancing memory for product information as a function of its ability to enhance a product’s distinctiveness within its surrounding context,” write authors Aradhna Krishna (University of Michigan), May Lwin (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), and Maureen Morrin (Rutgers University).

Scent enhances a product’s distinctiveness, which helps consumers remember it down the line, the authors found…

In one study, the authors had 151 participants evaluate pencils that were unscented, scented with pine scent (common), or scented with tea tree scent (uncommon). “We found that the memory for the scented pencils was much greater than memory for the unscented pencils, and that this effect was especially pronounced after a time delay,” the authors write. They also found that participants’ memory of the uncommonly (tea tree) scented pencils was more resistant to decay. [From the Journal of Consumer Research - Does Scent Enhance Product Memories?]

Some of the product attributes presented to the subjects were claims like, “Is endorsed with the Green Seal environment standard,” “Contains superior graphite lead,” and “Are made from premium oak trees that hail from California.” The subjects remembered these and other characteristics better for the smelly pencils.

Another experiment tested the effects of ambient scent; the researchers found that recall of all objects in an environment was improved by an ambient scent, the recall of individual products wasn’t aided significantly.


Read more: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/scent-increases-product-recall.htm