Retail tricks making us to buy more: aroma and sound

First of all, the things I will talk about in this article relate to Marketing. Marketing is the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers. With its focus on the customer, marketing is one of the premier components of business management.

Every day we face marketing used by big and even small enterprises. What do you think, how often do people see advertisement per day? It’s been said the average American sees or hears 4,000-plus ads per day. Seems to be really high! But mostly depends on the person. A policeman directing traffic will see fewer ads than a person sitting in front of his or her computer surfing the web for hours.

There are some other hidden marketing tools targeting on customer, to make him or her buying more or at least to draw attention to the store or goods. They are: aroma and sound, we usually don’t even notice them while shopping. Rather to say, we notice them but we don’t understand how they influence us.

Smell is the first sense we use when we are born. Moreover smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. That's why smell can trigger a happy memory more quickly than e.g. touching. Therefore scents go beyond our rational perception and have an ultimate impact on our emotions.

Aroma (scent) marketing consists of diffusing a pleasant scent, fragrance, perfume or aroma not only to make the space smell nice but mostly to improve customer experience, increase sales, encourage guest loyalty and dwell-time and develop brand awareness. It influences on our sense of smell which determines our mood and emotional expressions.

Do you remember the smell of fresh bakery products? Did not you ever enter the bakery and buy anything there just because of the amazing smell? ;-) Or the smell of fresh coffee at the gas station? That makes you feel you need and really want to buy it. That’s how it works!

According to statistics presented by Nike 84% of customers prefer to shop in good smelling store (in spite of 10-20% of goods price difference) instead of store without any aroma. Samsung scent study confirms that shopping time increases up to 26% in the aromatized store.

Another important marketing tool is sound. All our live we are surrounded by sound. It takes 0.146 seconds for a human being to react to sound. It's like a syringe: sound injects emotion and feeling directly into our being in an instant. Depends on rhythm, musical instruments and kind of music, customer is «forced» to stay longer in the store or make a quicker decision to buy something. There is evidence to prove that certain sounds can increase purchase behavior in a retail or hospitality environment. Playing calm ambient music can encourage people to relax and stay longer. Faster, louder music has the power to speed up behavior, drive people away more quickly or increase efficiency.

Next time you buy something or just enter the store pay attention to such small but very efficient marketing tools! Should be exсiting :-) But don't get hooked!

“If I can recognise your brand with my eyes closed, I am more likely to trust what you are trying to tell me.” – Steve Keller, Sound Strategist

Sources

https://www.retail.ru/articles/145412/

https://www.shopify.com/retail/the-science-of-smell-how-retailers-can-use-scent-marketing-to-make-more-sales

https://www.scentaustralia.com.au/scent-marketing-services/what-is-scent-marketing

https://www.experiencemarketingassociation.org/sound.php