Casinos play the scent card
In 1994, Dr. Hirsch gave a paper on the effect of scent on consumer spending to a group at the Bally Hotel in Las Vegas. At the end of his talk, an audience member stood up and challenged him. “Hirsch,” he said, “the odors aren’t affecting consumers; they’re affecting the salesmen, who are being more friendly.” Hirsch was stumped. It was a variable he hadn’t considered.Walking back to his room, he passed a bank of slot machines, and three cherries rang up in his brain: What if he designed an experiment using aroma and one-armed bandits — a totally salesperson-free control group!
So he set up a scent-free control area, and another with a faint, pleasant scent. Then he stood back and let the low rollers ante up. Afterward, he compared the test sample’s receipts with the weekend before the study and the weekend after. In the control area, there was about a 3% uptick in bets, defining the study’s margin of error. But in the scented area, receipts were up 45%. When the study was replicated using a higher level of odorant, there was a 53% increase. The study was reported in the journal Psychology & Marketing. Since then, Hirsch says, most casinos use some form of scent, although all will deny it.
Despite instant comparisons to the famous subliminal advertising ploys first discussed by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders, Hirsch claims to be unconcerned by the ethical implications of this sensory manipulation. For one thing, he says, the scents have to be used in high enough concentrations to be noticeable, so they can’t be secret. “When you use lower odors, it’s less effective than when you use higher odors,” he says. “So why would people bother using subliminal smells when higher odors have greater efficacy?” (Other researchers have warned that cranking up a scent too high, however, can be a turn-off.)
Excerpt from http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/97/brand-spirit.html
