When our surroundings smell nice, we immediately feel much better. We find some smells calming and others stimulating. And some of them even make us want to buy more. Just in time for World Fragrance Day, we discussed which fragrances these are, how they influence our consumption behavior, and which other tricks retailers use with Professor Marko Sarstedt, the marketing expert from the University of Magdeburg.

Our guest today

Today our guest is Professor Marko Sarstedt. He is head of the Department of Business Administration with the focus on Marketing in the Faculty of Economics & Management here at the University of Magdeburg. His research focuses on consumer behavior and market research, and among other things his work has led him to discover that we are tempted to buy by the scent of cinnamon. In addition to Business Administration and Marketing, Bachelor’s programs in International Management, Business and Society and International Business and Economics are also available.

*the audio file is only available in German

The Podcast to Read

Intro voice: "Wissen, wann du wilst." The podcast about research at the University of Magdeburg.

Ina Götze: Be it online, in the city center or in our mailbox, everywhere we look there are advertisements. And even if we firmly believe we can, unfortunately it isn’t always so easy for us to elude their influence. Our marketing expert, Professor Marko Sarstedt corroborates this. He is my guest today and will discuss the effect of advertising with me, and in particular influencing factors such as light, fragrance and the presentation of products, which all come under his specific area of expertise. Welcome!  

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Thank you very much! I’m delighted to be here.

Ina Götze: And that brings us to the subject: you conducted a project with the German Railways where you examined the influence of scent on the sense of wellbeing and satisfaction of its passengers. What exactly did you discover in the process? In other words, do we prefer to travel by train if it smells nice?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: We did not actually look into that exactly, but we did carefully examine the question of how scents influence consumer behavior over the long term, and in this case particularly, that of train passengers. We set up a project with the German Railways, which overall actually ran for several years, but the core study lasted four months. In the project we provided all of the trains that ran between two larger cities in southern Germany with a fragrance, which was continuously sprayed in the train carriages, and then we measured consumer behavior. In simple terms, interviewers passed regularly through these carriages and identified the commuters who had already agreed to take part in the study, and we found out some pretty fascinating things. The participants suddenly found their train journeys more pleasant, they found this service experience better, were more likely to recommend it to others, in other words a lot of things that were actually good for the railway company as far as the experience of their service was concerned. But actually, what was really exciting about the study was that afterwards, of all these participants, only one was able to rationalize it somehow and said, “Yes, there was sometimes something like a fragrance, but otherwise I don’t really know.” And what I want to say with this is that in fact nobody was aware of having noticed this fragrance. And still it had had a positive impact on their behavior and/or perception of the train journey.

Ina Götze: That sounds really fascinating. What kind of fragrance was it? I mean, what did the train smell of?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: We did, of course, carry out several preliminary studies in order to identify the best fragrance, something that was somewhat calming, because as a rule traveling by train can be exciting enough, to say the least. Ultimately it turned out to be a blend of melon and violets. This brought about a slightly calming effect without, however, causing people to switch off completely, because we didn’t want that to happen either.

Ina Götze: Hmm, no, you wouldn’t want all the passengers to nod off...

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Exactly! You would be hard pressed to find a smell that could do that, but really we didn’t want it to pep people up either. That was the goal.

Ina Götze: Many people will know that smells can also trigger certain memories and feelings in us, for example when we smell spring in the air for the first time, or a particular perfume. For me personally, it is rum flavoring, because when I was younger we always baked cookies with my mom and stirred rum essence into the filling. Nowadays, as soon as I smell that I become a child again! So fragrances can trigger a great deal in us. Are there fragrances that can not only make us feel more satisfied, like melon and violets, but also that can tempt us to buy something?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Absolutely! But I should point out that fragrances don’t actually have the power to make us go submissively into a store and clear the shelves, that’s not how it works. But they can indeed tempt us, for example, to spend longer in a store, and this almost automatically leads to us buying more. There’s a nice study where researchers sprayed the scent of melon into sales environments, in the supermarket, and they actually observed that the consumers spent 30% longer in the supermarket and in fact bought 23% more on average. So there was a considerable uplift in turnover, but this fragrance works differently in different environments; for example in the supermarket the melon aroma works very nicely, but in fashion stores, lemon tends to work better, and naturally there is also a cultural aspect to this. In other words there isn’t a single recipe for success, a magic tincture, that has to be used, instead it very often depends...

Ina Götze: So melon is the all-purpose weapon...

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Not necessarily. Of course we do now have two studies where it worked well, but in different contexts it might not be as effective.

Ina Götze: But what do smells trigger in us? I mean, what is happening in our heads for them to have an effect on us? Like buying something, for example.

Professor Marko Sarstedt: First of all they often give us the stimulus that we need to suddenly see certain needs as urgent, as particularly important. There was one nice study, where researchers sprayed chocolate fragrance in a book shop and suddenly people bought more chocolate books... baking books! There was a special association that made people say: “OK, now I’ve suddenly got this chocolate aroma in my nostrils and somehow I really feel like baking.” So there was this stimulus - and that is something that fragrances really can do - they can, in fact, reawaken associations that come from childhood. Imprints are made very early on, at very young ages such as 5 or 6 years, and we have very definite associations with smells - often noises too - and when we become aware of them later, it is just as if we had been transported back to childhood. And that is a good feeling, a reward motive, which suddenly surfaces, and which, perhaps, we want to satisfy by buying something.

Ina Götze: For me, it is rum essence that would be my “kryptonite” when I’m out shopping. And whilst the use of fragrance in marketing is not yet so widespread, Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, uses it extremely successfully. The majority of retailers, however, rely on very traditional methods of which many of us will perhaps be aware. For example, the red price tags, that really do shout from a distance that there is a bargain to be had. Are there other tricks and mechanisms that perhaps guide us to a certain product?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Yes, of course - thousands! We could fill a whole host of podcasts with them, but perhaps we should get back to the subjects that we are exploring today. We have, for example, as consumers, a tendency to always choose a middle option. So, if I give someone a choice of three products: a cheap one of low quality, a moderately priced one of medium quality, and an expensive one of excellent quality, then usually they will tend to select the middle option. In many situations this is absolutely the right thing to do; if we don’t exactly know if the product is good or bad, then doing this balances the risk. We don’t want the really cheap one because we don’t know if the quality is good enough, but perhaps it shouldn’t be the expensive one either, and so we are able to justify the middle one to ourselves, and others, really well. This happens in the background... and actually it makes us feel good. In fact it isn’t a bad thing, but it does happen unconsciously, so we don’t actually scrutinize it, even if a certain amount of thought is going on in the brain, it isn’t the case that I stand in front of the supermarket shelf and constantly think to myself: “That's cheap! Is it perhaps too cheap or too expensive?” and then somehow reflect until I reach a decision. Instead, more often than not it is something that happens automatically.

The other thing is that in the supermarket, as we move around, there are a multitude of influencing factors that guide us to behave in certain ways. There is light, there are smells, there is music. Music: there is always a bit of music from the radio warbling in the background, that somehow is quite pleasant, that makes us feel that our surroundings are more fluid and when we perceive something as fluid, then there are simply fewer dissonances and then we feel that perhaps things are better, and we are more comfortable.

As far as the light is concerned, anyone can try this out, for example when you’re looking around in the fruit and veg department and see, for example, a tomato, then it always looks really fresh and firm and then when you get it home and unpack it, it somehow doesn’t look so great anymore. So what happened in the hour after you bought it? Nothing, but it is the light, light tone, that is used in the supermarket to make the fruit look especially fresh. The retailers, of course, make use of this; when laying out the routes around the store they make sure there are no windows, and if you take a look to see if there is a clock in the supermarket, you’ll see that no, there isn’t one. So, [there are] lots of things that we don’t ask questions about, because they have always been like that, but the supermarket is actually one of the best thought-out spaces that we will ever see. Nothing is left to chance.

Ina Götze: I would have thought that that there are no windows because space is needed for shelves. So why are there no windows really?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: They could make skylights too, for example. So one reason why there are no windows is... the presentation of the goods always has to be identical. You have to visualize from a meta perspective what it is actually like to go shopping in a supermarket. There are thousands of products and we are looking for very specific ones. And often we can recognize them from the color, the logo or something similar. Let's imagine that there are always different lighting conditions in the supermarket. This would cause us to have terrible trouble identifying these products because suddenly the red would no longer look as red as normal, but instead because now it is darker, it stands out a bit less. And that might sound banal, but it is actually a significant factor in the supermarket.

Ina Götze: Next time I’ll take note! Really, I’ll pay attention to the lighting and the music. I am going to shop differently. Can these findings be transferred to other areas? Or does it actually only apply to our shopping behavior?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Mmm... ultimately it is extremely complex. That’s because, when you think of marketing, then you always only think about shopping, but actually consumer behavior covers far more. It's about how we find out about things, how we actually choose a product, how we then, once we have bought the product or perhaps decide not to buy it... but let’s say, we do buy it, do we actually use it? How do we dispose of it? These are all questions that relate to consumer behavior and all these things that we are looking at ultimately have an influence on each of these aspects.

But it can translate to completely different areas too, of course, for example voting behavior when it comes to political parties. There too it has been demonstrated that this compromise effect that I just described, in other words this tendency to take the middle path, can also often be seen in people’s voting behavior. Then there is the question of nudging, for example, whereby a regulator attempts to nudge consumers into behaving in a way that is beneficial for them. That is also a core marketing issue, for example with food labeling. How exactly should food labels be designed in order to make clear to the consumer that something is good for them, while another thing maybe is more likely to be bad? These are also core marketing questions.

Ina Götze: So the majority of influencing factors now are very much subliminal, for example when it comes to the design of labels, or, as we’ve already discussed, fragrance. We may notice certain things, but as you yourself have already said, it isn’t the case that we actually stand in the supermarket and consciously make a decision. Do we have any chance whatsoever of avoiding this kind of manipulation?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: To a certain extent, yes. After all, we are not creatures with no free will who, only because we see an advert or notice a smell or are subjected to a particular kind of lighting, suddenly run amok and buy everything in sight. If it was so simple for a company, then we wouldn’t see product failure rates of 80-90% in the market. So of course we aren’t passively subjected to all this. But in fact a large proportion of our behavior is nonetheless automated. We say that around 80-90% of our purchasing behavior is actually more or less automatic, because we also spend very little time in front of a supermarket shelf before making a final decision. We could, of course, avoid this to a certain extent, if we actively analyzed everything, but naturally we are not built that way. Our brains are designed to save as much energy as possible and they seek to make things as easy for themselves as possible, so scrutinizing things, shopping in this way, is actually something that we avoid. I myself can’t do it. I walk through the supermarket on autopilot and buy things without stopping to question why at the end of every aisle. You can try to do it, but in practice it is extremely difficult. With other things, like a fragrance, for example, it might even become impossible, because we are perhaps physiologically not in a position to perceive this fragrance and yet it influences us. But throws up ethical difficulties too.

Ina Götze: That was actually going to be one of my questions: whether you yourself sometimes fall for these ploys. I mean you are extremely familiar with these mechanisms and are sure to be more aware of them than the ordinary consumer. Do you nevertheless buy the “middle” product and think: “Now I really have been taken in by this advert after all!”

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Yes, although the wording “taken in” suggests that it is somehow bad for us, but often that isn’t actually the case because... in fact we can also feel better for making the choice. With this kind of compromise effect, for example, we take the middle option because we anticipate that we will regret buying this product less. After all, if we buy the more expensive product, then afterwards we can always ask: “Was that the right choice? Was it worthwhile? What if my friends ask me about it and criticize me for it?”

Then a social component comes into the mix, which actually underlies such behavior. So in fact it is often a good thing for us. It is exactly the same when I buy a product: a smartphone that, of course, is completely overpriced, but to me it is worth it. So in that sense the thing about “being taken in” is always relative, but actually I do catch myself asking: “Why did you actually buy that now?” And yet, of course, during the buying process, I don’t analyze it at all. I’m not able to do so at all. I would simply spend a ridiculous amount of time shopping if I were constantly analyzing why I do everything. Why that one? Yes, I am just as much under the influence of marketing as everyone else. But to some extent that is good for me too. It makes me feel better.

Ina Götze: I, and I’m sure our listeners too, find it reassuring that even a marketing expert isn’t able to resist it. Something that you have already alluded to is, of course, that advertising and marketing are all about making money, after all a company has to achieve a certain turnover or it won’t survive in the market. But over and above this, it is about many, many more things, about building a particular image, making sure that the customers are satisfied with the product and also that this shopping experience is simply a better one. On the other hand, marketing is about capturing figures. Is it possible to measure something like this? For example satisfaction?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Of course, at first it tends to elude direct measurement. It isn’t as nice as turnover or a weight, a body size or such like, a physical quantity, that can more or less be measured directly, instead it is more abstract. But marketing researchers and psychologists have been addressing this for centuries - for a century already - how one can actually measure such concepts, such theoretical concepts adequately? And we know from other fields, psychology, for instance, where for example they seek to measure depression, that is also something that cannot be directly observed, but must be somehow inferred on the basis of certain patterns of behavior or, for example, on the basis of very particular response behavior to a questionnaire. For this reason, for starters, it is absolutely not something that is only relevant to marketing per se. When it comes to attitudes, perception or intention, these are not always things that can be directly grasped and actually a great deal of research has been done about them. We often deal with questions from survey research, in other words, how should we actually structure questions in order to be able to reliably and validly measure such things as satisfaction, or, for example, a company’s reputation, an image, a brand or a brand personality. So that it is possible to say, “Hey, these are good measurements, somehow this adequately captures this concept that is so hard to grasp,” and that is a huge challenge because the concept itself, satisfaction, image, corporate reputation, cannot be directly observed. There is, after all, no standard with which I can draw a comparison, instead it is simply as I define it and there are a whole lot of discussions, in which we are also involved in this area: How can that even be measured? How can we, perhaps, learn from physics, to transfer its measurement principles to such soft sciences as the social sciences in order simply to be able to measure such things better.

Ina Götze: I find physics really fascinating. So linking physics and the social sciences. Now, of course, it is possible to predict physical quantities, so factor A has such and such an impact on someone and then, for example, provokes this reaction. Can you do the same thing with behavior? So can you say, if the parameters are shaped in such a way, the customer will behave like this?

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Yes, to an extent, it depends a little on what kind of behavior exactly we are looking at. In physics, of course, it is different, because we have fixed natural laws, according to which certain reactions occur. It would be funny if my physics teacher could hear me talking about physics now. I barely scraped an E in physics in year 10, so it is quite funny that I am dealing with physical things now, but actually it is really interesting and... well! In any case, in the social sciences it is, of course, a little bit more complex. Because we have these soft concepts and for that reason many individual factors, social factors, that influence our behavior, that are also not completely tangible. In this respect there are certain limits, but actually it is possible, by using methods from the data sciences, for example, with big data, in other words extremely large quantities of data that are constantly being updated - like that which is analyzed, for example, in the context of social network analyses, or machine learning - we can actually predict behavior, consumption behavior, online purchasing behavior very well indeed. That is how it is. Whether or not it is always as useful for actually understanding it in terms of substance, that, on the other hand, is another matter. If we have a very large amount of data and very adept algorithms, then perhaps we will be able to say, “OK, with a certain degree of probability, such and such will happen,” but why that happens is another question entirely. Marketing researchers are looking very closely at this question. There are two camps. The prediction-centered view, that relies very heavily on data sciences and then more the consumer behavior, which prefers to use psychological concepts to test why something happens experimentally. There is a trend at the minute that we are seeing, that marries the two things together: predictions on the one hand, but then also understanding why it happens so that next time it will perhaps be possible to make better predictions.

Ina Götze: Hey! So I’m actively participating in science with my online shopping behavior!

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Of course! Every Twitter post, every Facebook post is analyzed, of course it is. A couple of German researchers have just conducted a nice study and actually managed to improve on the prediction accuracy of the RKI’s covid infection figures by matching Twitter feeds, Facebook posts and Google search inquiries, and by doing it on a geographical basis you can see what is happening very clearly. Incidentally, many health ministries have been doing this for ages. For example, when there is a large wave of influenza in winter and certain search queries come up and you can see exactly where the searches originated, then you can just see clusters, clusters of infection suddenly and then you can see very accurately how these illnesses spread by tracking the online search queries. To a certain extent everyone is involved in it.

Ina Götze: Crazy! Well... crazy, but fascinating! And now to our last question and thus to the moral of the story. Something that you have already alluded to is, there have to be ethical limits. In your view, which are the areas where you would say - for example, politics - that these findings should not be used? Because simply behavior in this area should not be influenced.

Professor Marko Sarstedt: Yes, the silly thing about research is, that in practice, when it is first publicized, then it is, per se, used. The question, then, whether it should be used, does not arise, because... everything that can be done is generally done at some point. History does, indeed, show this, frequently in tragic ways. Admittedly, one can nevertheless look at the ethics of whether or not it is sensible to examine something, whether the practices as they are at that moment, whether that is something that should be supported. I am in two minds about it, because on the one hand, I consider the consumer to be absolutely capable of reflection, not just someone who submissively passes through the neighborhood buying things, for example, just because an advert suggests that they should.

On the other hand, it is also the case that advertising can also be entirely manipulative. Let us look at advertising. Advertising is, in fact, simply there in order to show us ways of satisfying certain needs that exist. But advertising can also go a step too far, by suggesting that we have certain needs. In my lectures, I have the lovely example of hot dog water, where somebody buys half a liter of water with a hot dog in it for over 30 dollars and then promotes it by praising it for its positive health benefits. And then people in LA rush to buy it. Of course you might ask yourself: what on earth is going on? And personally I would say that a line has been crossed here. Because it is really absurd, but when you put yourself in the place of the people who are buying this, then of course other motives are satisfied, and other needs satisfied - differentiation, for example. It gives them the feeling that they are somehow new and hip. It just makes them feel better. And then they post it on Facebook: “Hey! Look at this! I’ve just bought some hot dog water.” So to this extent... it is actually very difficult because superficially you can say that it is ethically questionable, but more subtly other things are actually achieved with it, than are on the radar when simply considering the ethical dubiousness.

However, in my view, where it becomes objectively difficult is when the manipulation is subliminal, in other words unconscious, and we are unable to avoid it, that actually can have negative consequences for our health. Let’s take scents as an example. There are, after all, people who are hyper-allergic to these messenger substances and if there is no obligation to notify people of their use, then they might get on the train and find the substance there in concentrations that are high enough to give them an allergic reaction. We had a lot of discussions about this too, actually with the manufacturer of the fragrance we used, and we were able to make sure it was ok, but of course... if there is too much of it with too high an intensity, then in fact it can have extremely negative consequences for individuals, and of course that must not happen. We would either need to have an obligation to notify people, or it might simply be better to leave it. To that extent, there are ethical boundaries at the point where it might actually have a negative physical impact on someone, and we could not predict it. As marketers we must simply let it go and also at the point where some kinds of pseudo-needs are evoked that actually do not exist.

Ina Götze: So, all you entrepreneurs out there, please don’t go spraying melon fragrance around indiscriminately! Many, many thanks. I think we could make another hundred podcasts with you. We will definitely have to come up with another good subject; it is all extremely interesting. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for listening to us out there. I look forward to the next podcast and wish you all the best until then!

Intro voice: "Wissen, wann du wilst." The podcast about research at the University of Magdeburg.