This is my scent: understanding inconspicuous sensory possessions through perfume consumption

Abstract

The important roles that possessions play in consumer identity construction and projections have been well researched and demonstrated in consumer culture theories. Past literatures mainly focused on material possessions which consumer utilised as extended selves. With the uprising trend of sensory marketing, researchers have started to focus on the influence of sensory and inconspicuous objects on consumers. In fashion consumption, researchers had focused on how material possessions such as garments and accessories are used as fashion statements. However, as an important category of fashion products, perfume is rather neglected due the human biological characteristics of olfaction as well as the associated cultural characteristics. Aiming to fill this research gap, the research question of this thesis was designed as “how consumers choose their favourite scents to be incorporated as a part of their identities”, in order to discover and understand the association between scents as inconspicuous sensory possessions and consumer identity as well as extended selves.

The research aims to focus on the phenomenon that consumers wear perfume to express and complete their identities and self-concepts. Therefore, it adopts the subjectivism and constructionism paradigms, and applies the philosophical position of hermeneutics and interpretivism. The data was collected through seven semi-structured interviews. The informants were chosen based on regular perfume usage and general favour towards perfumes.

The findings show the uniqueness of perfumes as fashion products and discover in depth understandings of the cultivation and utilisation of scents meanings. Consumers learn about the social norms of scents through socialisation in cultural groups, or public olfactory codes, and develop their own scent perspectives, interpretations, and preferences in cultural environments. The scent meanings are utilised by consumers to project idiosyncratic identities but at the same time blend in by indicating belongingness to cultural groups. Through personal experience, consumers develop subjective perspectives and standards of scents, which are not only used to examine their own projections of selves, but also to perceive and evaluated others’ expressed images. That is, scents are communication tools for consumers to express and reflect who they are and who they want to be. Moreover, the data unveils various ways which consumers utilise perfumes to extend selves as well as the signification in identity construction. The classification of perfumes not only indicates the meanings of the perfumes as possessions and how scents are utilised to extend selves, but also implies the development of identity construction.

The findings of this thesis can be summed as four main takeaways: (1) the rich meanings of scents despite the marginalisation of the sense of smell, (2) the powerful role of scents as inconspicuous sensory possessions in identity construction and projection, (3) the association and representation of the three types of perfumes and various self-concepts, and (4) the circular process of scent meaning cultivation and utilisation which further provides a glimpse of a broader view of the utilisation and development of possession meanings in identity construction. The takeaways not only provide a thorough view of scents as inconspicuous sensory possessions in identity construction, but also can be implemented widely into such as sensory marketing and fashion marketing.