Imagine Satisfaction from Smells

Expose teenagers to ten seconds of a pizza scent, and those teens’ hunger for relatively unhealthy foods such as pizza peaks. But if you expose teens to ten minutes of the scent, their preference for less healthy items drops. This isn’t true with the smells of healthier items, such as apples, according to studies at University of South Florida and Louisiana State University.
     After verifying these findings, the researchers moved their ultrasonic scent nebulizer to a supermarket frequented mostly by adults. There they used scents of chocolate chip cookies versus fresh strawberries. As expected, after extended exposure to the cookie fragrance, there were lower preferences for unhealthy grocery store items than when there was extended exposure to the fragrance of strawberries.
     The pizza smell with the teens and the chocolate chip cookie fragrance with the adults fires up imagination of actual consumption. At the start, this leads to the phenomenon of savoring—anticipating the actual consumption. With indulgences, savoring sharpens the hunger.
     However, with prolonged exposure, the imagination instead leads to satiation—the feeling of having had enough. Researchers at University of Denver and University of Florida found that this affects the degree of enjoyment if a person then goes ahead to consume the item, or even participates in a previously highly anticipated event. In this research, the degree of enjoyment by college students of their Spring Break plans was analyzed.
     Successful selling often depends on mobilizing the power of the shopper’s imagination. But because the imagination can be so powerful, the shopper can get as fed up with imagined consumption as with real consumption.
     Researchers at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University found that when consumers were asked to vividly imagine tasting a particular item with which they were familiar, the experience reduced the consumers’ receptivity to actually tasting the item afterwards. 
     Similarly, looking at photos of a food we love increases our appetite for it. But looking for too long kills our appetite for that food. Ask people to rate or express their relative preferences for foods shown to them in pictures. After repeating the task many times, they will lose interest in actually eating the food.
     This happens less if consumers evaluate a range of foods. Used properly, imagination whets the appetite for more. Just be careful not to drown off the appetite with prolonged imagination.

For your success: Retailer’s Edge: Boost Profits Using Shopper Psychology

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Charge for Savoring
Limit Availability to Overcome Satiation
Give Just a Taste of the Product to Sweeten