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This paper addresses whether or not the diffusion of scents will positively change evaluations of a service experience in a health service environment. Qualitative data was collected in a pediatric department and quantitative data in a dental office. Conditions of no scent, relaxing and stimulating scents were used. In the pediatric service, both a relaxant and a stimulating odor were found to improve the evaluation of the service experience, and allowed the children to be more positive about their hospital stay. In the dental office, the introduction of a relaxing odor increased approach behavior toward the service for females.
INTRODUCTION
Odors have long been known to be capable of altering the emotional state of humans through current or retrospective channels (Schifferstein and Blok, 2002). The smell of fresh mown grass, lilacs in the spring air, or the wafting odor of fresh baked bread on a Sunday morning...chances are they all involve memories or associations from the past. The odors are especially powerful reminders of autobiographical experience, an effect which has become known as the Proust phenomenon (Krishna, et.al., 2010; Jönsson, et.al., 2005). Since the middle of the 1990s, many private companies have understood the importance of the integration of an olfactory dimension in their products, particularly at the point of sale.
Specialty stores like bakeries, chocolate shops and florists often carry product lines with inherent ambient scents (Mitchell, et.al., 1995) and these specialty stores rely on scents of their products to influence customers (Ellen and Bone, 1999). Contemporary service providers and managers of stores carrying products not possessing an inherent (or 'expected') scent are adding ambient scents to their retail environments (e.g., an artificially diffused floral scents) to enhance the retail environment (Goldkuhl and Styven, 2007; Spangenberg, et.al., 2006). The altering of the olfactory environment is not limited to the adult market. Crayola markets a pastel Magic Scent pencil releasing a pleasant scent which impregnates the drawing; the manufacturer, Kickers, makes shoes for children that are scented with vanilla and strawberry; and even dolls are scented, as Polly integrates odors in their models of Lea and Lila with clothes and accessories scented with melon and Kiwi (Guichard, et.al., 1998).
The addition of scent is not limited to products. Consumers are taught to attach more...