It's beginning to smell (and sound) a lot like Christmas: the interactive effects of ambient scent and music in a retail setting
Section snippets
Retail atmospherics
Published work on the effects of environmental stimuli in retail settings found its genesis in Kotler's (1973) “atmospherics” work, introducing the view that retail environments create atmospheres that affect shopping behavior. Subsequent research has used various environmental factors (such as crowding, music, color and olfactory cues) to create said atmospheres and has been conducted primarily in the tradition of environmental psychology. Donovan and Rossiter (1982) suggested that Mehrabian
Ambient scent
The use of ambient scents in retail environments has been addressed by a number of studies from the perspective of both practitioners (e.g., Miller, 1991, Pacelle, 1992) and academics (e.g., Bone and Ellen, 1999, Spangenberg et al., 1996). While specialty stores often rely on the inherent scents of their product lines to attract customers (e.g., bath shops and candy stores), many retailers have begun to rely on ambient scents not associated with any particular product to attract customers and
Music
Music is another environmental cue demonstrated to affect consumer behavior. Several studies have demonstrated that music can affect mood (e.g., Yalch and Spangenberg, 1988, Yalch and Spangenberg, 1990, Yalch and Spangenberg, 2000), perceptions of time (e.g., Kellaris and Altsech, 1992, Kellaris and Kent, 1992), sales in food services (e.g., North and Hargreaves, 1998), interactions between buyers and sellers (e.g., Dubé et al., 1995), product selection (e.g., North et al., 1999) as well as
Interaction of ambient scent and music
The interaction of environmental cues is a normatively important and theoretically interesting area of research that has received little scholarly attention. In an effort to close our knowledge gap in this area, the current experiment investigates the interaction between the retail atmospheric factors of ambient scent and music.
As noted above, olfaction research has stressed the positive consequences of consistency between olfactory cues and other variables important to marketers. We know
Design and sample
A 2 (no scent vs. Christmas scent)×2 (non-Christmas music vs. Christmas music) full factorial design was implemented to test the hypothesis. The study was conducted in a lab environment, where olfactory and musical stimuli, as well as the participants' exposure to images related to a retail environment, could be controlled.
The sample for the experiment consisted of 140 undergraduate students who participated in the study for course credit. The participants were of North American birth who
Results
The effects of scent and music on the focal dependent variables were assessed using a MANOVA model. The analysis indicated no significant multivariate or univariate main effects of scent (all p's>0.16) or music (all p's>0.21). The multivariate interaction effect of scent and music, however, was significant, multivariate F(7,120)=3.01, p<0.01. The univariate analyses indicated that the interaction of ambient scent and music had significant effects on all dependent measures (all p<0.05). The
Discussion
The results of this experiment indicate that consistency between an ambient scent and music in a retail setting leads to more favorable evaluations of the store, its merchandise and the store environment. Behavioral intentions to visit the store are also positively affected by consistency between ambient scent and music. When inconsistency exists between the ambient scent and music, however, evaluations and behavioral intentions are either not affected or in some instances are negatively
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