Olfactics: Chocolate Smell in Bookstores

Check out this video about a study conducted last year that found the smell of chocolate helps to make customers spend more time in bookstores.  The study, conducted by researchers at Hasselt University in Belgium found that people were over twice as likely to look at more than one book before purchasing when the store smelled like chocolate.  The chocolate smell also increased overall book sales and increased the sale of romance novels and food-related books by 40%.  They conducted the study over ten days, making the shop smell like chocolate for half of it’s operating hours.  The researchers observed the behavior of every 5^th person that entered the  bookstore which gave them a sample size of 201 study subjects.

Olfactics (smell) is a really crucial, yet often overlooked part of the nonverbal communication side of customer service.  The smell of both the environment and the employees of a business that customers come into contact with should be considered when assessing the overall customer experience and working on homing your nonverbal skills.  At its simplest level, everything and everyone should smell nice, but not overpowering.  If you wish to dive deeper into olfactics, you should consider what you want your customers to do.  Stay longer?  Relax?  Get excited?  Buy more romance novels?  Once you've decided what your goals are, you can begin to research what smell or combination of smells you should use.  I would suggest contacting a professor at a local university who specializes in nonverbal communication.  They should be able to help point you in the right direction.  Who knows…Maybe they’ll turn it into a cool research study!  Olfactics is a very powerful nonverbal cue.  If used correctly, I believe it can make a big difference and help increase sales and customer satisfaction.  

-Sam

People Spend More Time in a Bookstore That Smells Like Chocolate. Dir. geobeats. 23 July 2013. YouTube. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.

Doucé, L., Poels, K., Janssens, W., & De Backer, C. (2013). Smelling the books: The effect of chocolate scent on purchase-related behavior in a bookstore. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 36, 65–69. doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.07.006