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Our sense of smell is an incredibly powerful target for marketing of everything from baked goods to new cars. Research published in the International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation has looked at how brand recognition is linked to human emotions and behavior in a retail setting when deliberately placed ambient odors are present.

Rupa Rathee and Pallavi Rajain of the Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology in Haryana, India, used non-probability sampling to analyze the results from a questionnaire. The basic conclusion is that emotion and behavior are well correlated with brand recognition associated with an odor. Moreover, scent marketing positively affects purchasing behavior especially when an emotional component is present.

Marketing often talks about attracting eyeballs, to advertising, displays, and products. However modern consumers have grown jaded and cynical and are not so easily distracted by the visual. However, the new research hints at a different strategy where potential buyers if they cannot be drawn by a visual feast to a purchase might instead be led by the nose. Other researchers have previously noted how scent marketing can draw a customer to a product and at the same time influence their perception, judgment, and behavior, in ways that conventional marketing cannot.

The key to exploiting this notion of scent marketing will be to create a brand memory effect associated with a particular odor, the team's research suggests. The use of scent must be appealing rather than appalling given just how strong the connection between olfaction and emotion can be. The findings are, one might say, nothing to be sniffed at.