Coffee isn’t the only product that Starbucks sells, but they make sure it’s the only product you smell.

Although Lowe’s hardly ever cuts wood in its stores, the smell of freshly cut wood is always present.

Your local movie theater may sell nachos, pizza and other foods, but all you’re going to smell is fresh popcorn.

Why are so many businesses working so hard to control what their customers smell?

They understand the powerful relationship between scent and memory.  They’ve seen firsthand how the sense of smell can be used to trigger the right response from a customer. From Cinnabon to Singapore Airlines, Abercrombie & Fitch to Dunkin’ Doughnuts, savvy businesses are creating a brand through scent in a manner that no other method can.

How does it work?

Smell is the first sense we use when we’re born.  As adults, we can distinguish approximately 10,000 different smells…and those smells are extremely important to us.
At the back of the nose is the olfactory epithelium. This little patch of skin is key to everything we smell, containing olfactory receptor cells.  These special neurons sense smells by operating in a manner similar to taste buds.  Our brains have about 40 million different olfactory receptor neurons that work together to help us identify an incredibly wide range of smells.  What’s more is that olfactory neurons are the only neurons in the body that are replaced regularly.

How smell differs from sight and sound

Once olfactory neurons are triggered, the signals travel through a bundle called the olfactory tract to multiple locations throughout the brain.  Sight and sound signals first travel to a relay center.
Smell takes a direct route to the most primitive brain centers (limbic system structures), where they influence emotions and memories.
The limbic system deals with instinctive behaviors and has almost nothing to do with conscious thought.  The limbic system works in the mediation process between your recognition of an event, your perception of the event (pleasant or unpleasant) and your physiological reaction to it.
In other words…smell plays a powerful role in determining how you react and respond.

That’s why businesses that appear the same are frequented differently based on the way they smell.  The right scent creates an emotional bond and establishes a positive memory your customers will want to repeatedly experience.  That is the power behind scent marketing.

Scentfinity enhances your customer’s experience, helping you establish that subliminal emotional bond that keeps them coming back.  Increase store traffic, keep them in your store longer and become their must-visit location with scent marketing by Scentfinity.