The hidden power of odors - Studying scents in the academic marketing literature

Abstract

Senses make the world for us. Any experience without one of our five senses would not be the same. It is evident that all five senses are important contributors to the holistic experience, yet marketers have mainly focused on sight and hearing (Morrin and Ratneshwar, 2000). Today our surroundings are cluttered with marketing messages, which makes it difficult for a company to distinguish itself from its competitors (Aker, 2011). Because companies struggle to catch the customer's attention with visual stimuli, they have started to trust more primitive senses to pass through the information overload (Krishna, 2010; Lindström, 2006; Lwin et al. 2010).One of the underrated senses is the sense of smell that has recently become a huge marketing trend (Klara, 2012).

In this thesis, I will map academic literature written on scents in the marketing context. The thesis shows that the current marketing literature observes different odor dimensions such as pleasantness and congruency. In addition, this literature review explains and demonstrates how the odors have found to influence consumer behavior.