Scent marketing: what the research actually shows (and what it doesn’t)
November 3, 2026
The most quoted statistic in my industry has no source anyone can find. So I went looking for what we do know.
By Samuel, Founder, Bel-Air Aroma.
Imagine you’re a perfumer who also writes. You’re halfway through an article about scent, mood and memory, and you need one line to land: 75% of our emotions are generated by smell. You’ve seen it everywhere, in marketing books, trade articles, even academic papers. All you need is the source.
So you look. You follow the link in one article, which points to another, which points to a third. You buy the book everyone cites, a 2005 title on sensory branding, and read it properly. The publisher’s own page states the number outright. The book itself doesn’t contain it. You write to the author’s company, and they send you a copy of the book and tell you the research is in there. You hunt for the market-research study it supposedly came from. You can’t find it. You call a neuroscientist who studies emotion for a living. She has never heard of the figure.
That is what happened to Elizabeth Bromstein, a perfumer and journalist, who told the whole story on Nieman Lab on 26 October. She found hundreds of pages repeating the claim. She did not find a single one that could say where it came from.
I’m not surprised. I’ve never needed that number. But a business owner who asks me whether scent will make them money deserves better than a shrug or a statistic I can’t source. So I did what she did: I went to the actual studies.
Here’s what I found, what I see on the ground, and where I part ways with the research. Spoiler: the real numbers are smaller than the ones in the brochures. I trust them far more.
Why I’ve never sold scent with numbers
I played handball at a high level. I DJ for the love of it. I studied interior design, then spent six years as an area sales manager in decorative products, working with hotels and retailers. At 26 I travelled the world and stayed in hotels where every detail had been thought through, right down to the things you only notice when they’re missing.
I’d always put into decoration the same care for detail that I put into music. And I kept noticing the same gap: a place with great music and a beautiful interior, and no scent. I wanted to offer a 360° view of the customer experience, in places where people come to live something and come back for more.
A friend pointed me towards scent. She’s a perfumer, and she was my neighbour in the Bel-Air district of Rodez, where I grew up. That’s where the company’s name comes from. Today I live in Perth.
My first scene is a simple one. You have people over, and someone says: “It smells so good in here.” If it smells good at my place, people feel good at my place. If they feel good, they have a memorable time.
I didn’t need numbers to start. I’m attached to human emotion and to spontaneity. I like people, I like making them laugh and making them feel good. And I’ve always wondered whether there’s a more irrational purchase in this world than a fragrance. Nobody buys one because a spreadsheet told them to. That’s why I’ve never trusted our industry’s habit of waving percentages around.
But my clients ask what they’ll get, and they’re right to. They were running their businesses long before I turned up. I’m the cherry on the cake, not the essential. I come to enhance the work they’ve already done on design, music, lighting, welcome and service. They deserve an honest answer.
What the research actually shows
I’ll keep to what I could verify at the source. Where I couldn’t, I left it out.
Does a pleasant scent change how customers respond ? On average, yes.
The biggest piece of evidence I know is a meta-analysis by Holger Roschk and Masoumeh Hosseinpour at the University of Klagenfurt, published in the Journal of Marketing in 2020. It pools 671 effects from scent experiments (64 studies, around 15,000 participants). On average, a pleasant ambient scent lifted customer responses, such as emotions, perceived quality and satisfaction, by 3% to 15%.
Does it make people spend more ? A little, on average.
The same authors estimate that spending rises by about 3% on average, and by up to 23% in the most favourable conditions. Three per cent is the typical case. Twenty-three per cent is the best case, and the authors are clear that it only happens when the scent is deployed well.
What are those favourable conditions ?
The scent fits the place and what’s being sold. It feels familiar to customers (the authors point out that a popular scent isn’t necessarily a familiar one). It doesn’t clash with other scents or with the music. Service settings such as restaurants and spas tend to do better than shops that sell goods. And intensity isn’t a straight line: the relationship between how strong a scent seems and how people respond is not “more is better”.
Can scent save a poor experience ? No.
Roschk says it himself: a pleasant scent on its own won’t turn a poor shopping experience into a great one. It’s a finishing touch, which is exactly how I describe it to clients.
Can it backfire ? Yes.
The meta-analysis also found negative effects in some settings. The authors suspect scents that were too intense or didn’t fit, or venues that overwhelm customers by working on every sense at once.
Researchers at Concordia University in Montréal found something similar about space. In a simulated store, people in a crowded space felt calmer with a scent evoking open air, such as green apple or the seashore. In an almost empty space, they felt calmer with a scent evoking enclosed spaces. The highest anxiety came from an open, empty space filled with a “spacious” scent. Grohmann and Poon’s study measured self-reported anxiety, not sales, but it makes the point: the same scent can soothe in one room and unsettle in another. (My colleague Hugo wrote about this in What should your space smell like ?)
Is hospitality different from retail ?
A 2024 meta-analysis of 55 articles found a positive effect of pleasant scent in both sectors, and a stronger effect on cognitive and behavioural responses in hospitality. The authors also warn that hospitality results vary with how the studies were designed.
On my clients’ sites I don’t see a difference. If the dosage is right, the impact is just as strong in a shop as in a hotel. Scent signatures are simply more common in hotels. I’m telling you what I see, not what I’ve measured.
What does scent do to memory ?
This is the part I find most moving, and also the most misquoted. A review of the research on autobiographical odour memory concludes that memories triggered by a smell tend to be older, more emotional and more vivid than those triggered by sight or sound, often reaching back to the first ten years of life. They also come with a stronger feeling of being taken back in time. But they’re rarer. Smell doesn’t give you more memories. It gives you a different kind.
Does it work in a real shop, not just a lab ?
A team of researchers ran an experiment on young fashion shoppers in a real store in Australia, varying a vanilla aroma and the volume of the music (Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar and Oppewal, 2011). Both affected shoppers’ emotions and satisfaction. The arousal they created increased pleasure, which in turn went with more time and money spent in the store. It’s one store, one scent and one type of shopper, so I wouldn’t generalise. But it’s a real shop.
What don’t we know ?
A lot. The authors of the big meta-analysis describe the earlier results as equivocal, and they note that few findings explain why scent produces positive reactions. And I’ll be straight about my own work: I’ve never run a with-and-without test in a client’s venue. I can’t add numbers of my own.
What I see on the ground
Here’s what I can offer instead : cases, and what people tell me.
A children’s orthodontic practice in France
The practice is over 400 m², specialised in children. The problem was the smell. You know the one: the clinical, slightly sharp, clove-like smell many of us associate with the dentist. (It’s often linked to eugenol, a compound found in some dental materials.) It hits you the moment you walk in.
We diffused a very light, slightly sweet fig note through the practice’s air system, in a heavily regulated environment. It has been in place for a year and a half. The feedback has been very good. Some parents tell us they feel less stressed themselves without that smell, which takes them straight back to their own bad childhood memories of the dentist, and which they project onto their children. I think we all dragged our feet on the way there as kids.
I want to be careful here. I’m reporting what parents say. I’m not claiming that a scent reduces anxiety in children. But there’s published research pointing the same way. In 2005, a team at the Medical University of Vienna ran a randomised trial in a dental waiting room with 200 patients aged 18 to 77. Compared with no scent, both orange and lavender reduced anxiety and improved mood. Those were adults, self-reported measures, and different scents from my fig, so it isn’t proof of what happens in this practice. It does tell me I’m not imagining things.
Hotels
At the Radisson Blu Toulouse-Blagnac, and at Mercure and Ibis hotels, each hotel has its own olfactory signature in the rooms. We also make it as a room spray, sold in the hotel’s shop, so that guests can take the scent home with them. One thing I see too often in hotels is a different scent in the shared spaces, another in the rooms and another in the restrooms. I prefer one identity for the whole place, restrooms included. They stop being a place of purely physical need and become part of the experience.
Restaurants and venues in Bordeaux
Several semi-gastronomic restaurants and party venues in Bordeaux sit on former wetlands. We created a signature for them that also helps cover the damp smell, a double benefit. My rule of thumb for restaurants: not a heavy, woody fragrance, but something lighter and slightly sweet. And since my ambient fragrances are designed to stay light, true clashes are rare. The risk is in the theme.
A lesson from Perth
In Perth, a lot of people who know the scent-marketing world, or who simply understand what we sell, have only one reference: Crowne Plaza. Many have made that fragrance their own. The hotel is beautiful, so they want to smell like it.
To me this says two things. First, how attached people become to a fragrance, since it can bring back one specific place. Second, that borrowing a scent means borrowing someone else’s identity: your customers think of the hotel, not of you. Perth is a growing city, and I think businesses here have every reason to choose their own scent, so people come for yours and not the one everybody has.
The mistake I see most
Too strong. Clients are enthusiastic, so they set the diffuser too high on day one. Anyone can turn it up, so I tell them to start low and raise it gradually. Our diffusers are set from a mobile app, even remotely. The aim is to be noticed, but never to be too much. That fits what the research says: more isn’t better in a straight line. One more thing I’ve learned: my clients forget about the scent, because they live with it. They remember it when a customer walks in and says how good the place smells. That’s the goal: a solution that improves the daily experience without anyone having to think about it.
So, does scent make people spend more ?
A little, sometimes, under conditions. That’s my honest answer, and the research backs me up.
When a prospect asks me how much it will raise their sales, I tell them this isn’t a solution you can put a number on. A pleasant smell tends to keep people in a shop a little longer, and in a more relaxed state than a place with no scent or an unpleasant one. I believe that helps. The meta-analysis authors also report that scent can lead people to linger. But it’s the cherry on the cake. Don’t expect to multiply your sales.
I take numbers with a pinch of salt. Buying a fragrance is irrational by definition, so the returns are hard to measure. Still, I’ll admit that these findings comfort me: they’re modest, conditional and real, and they suggest this adds genuine value for my clients. And I’d rather walk into a messy shop that smells good than a spotless one that smells bad. But please don’t take that as a reason to skip the basics. Fix those first. Then think about scent.
Three questions to ask any scent provider (including me)
Where does that number come from ? Ask for the study, not the brochure. If nobody can name it, treat the number as decoration.
Can we start light and adjust ? A good provider lets you begin gently and tune it over time, rather than selling you an intensity.
Does this scent suit my place, my customers and my brand ? Or does it only suit the last place that used it ?
Let’s talk about your space
If you’d like to think this through for your own shop, restaurant or hotel, book a discovery meeting. It lasts between 30 minutes and an hour, and I take the time that’s needed. It’s free. You can leave with a quote, with the sample box, or, if you want to start straight away, with the machine and the fragrance.
For a standard-sized shop, a typical budget is around A$1,000, covering the machine and a 500 ml bottle that lasts five to seven months. After that, refills are A$280. Compare that with what you spent on your last campaign.
Scent your space.
Sources
Roschk, H. & Hosseinpour, M. (2020). Pleasant ambient scents: a meta-analysis of customer responses and situational contingencies. Journal of Marketing, 84(1), 125–145. doi.org/10.1177/0022242919881137
University of Klagenfurt summary of the meta-analysis: ae-ainf.aau.at
Fong, L.H.N. et al. (2024). A meta-analytic comparison of scent effect between retailing and hospitality. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. doi.org/10.1108/IJRDM-08-2023-0508
Grohmann, B. & Poon, T. (2014). American Journal of Business. Concordia University release: eurekalert.org
Morrison, M., Gan, S., Dubelaar, C. & Oppewal, H. (2011). In-store music and aroma influences on shopper behavior and satisfaction. Journal of Business Research, 64(6), 558–564. doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2010.06.006
Larsson, M. et al. (2014). Olfactory LOVER: autobiographical odour memory. Frontiers in Psychology. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3990043
Lehrner, J. et al. (2005). Ambient odors of orange and lavender reduce anxiety and improve mood in a dental office. Physiology & Behavior, 86(1–2), 92–95. doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.06.031
Bromstein, E. (2026, 26 October). I went looking for the source of one little statistic. That was easier said than done. Nieman Lab. niemanlab.org
Last review : Tuesday 3rd November 2026.