Smell immediately and unmistakably tells you what you need to know; there are no words nor information more accurate than what the nose receives. Italo Calvino

Scents are a means of communication with great potential. Diffusing a particular fragrance in a store can influence emotions and positively affect purchasing behaviour.

It’s not quite Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, but the direct link between emotions and a particular smell can definitely trigger a pleasant experience. Olfactory marketing, or scent marketing, deals with strategies that use scents and fragrances as a tool for optimising the in-store experience. Already crucial, especially for anyone working in retail, this new marketing frontier ensures that a place and their associated products and services become fixed in our memories through diffusing ad hoc fragrances.

Certain places can actually be identified by their smell, stimulating positive emotions even after some time, causing an instant affinity with the surrounding area. Recognising the aroma of a pastry shop or your grandmother's kitchen, or the smell of fresh laundry, or even that new car smell or the smell of the inside of some aeroplanes, goes to show that a certain fragrance really can make a certain space unforgettable - for better or worse.

Olfactory marketing is based on smells being able to evoke memories - our olfactory recognition can even recall memories from childhood - going so far as to imprint a positive memory of a brand. While visual stimuli are remembered as broken-down components, fragrances are more closely linked to memories and better able to trigger positive emotions.

And it’s that very emotion that becomes the determining factor of the success (or failure) of a sales experience.