What to diffuse in a gender‐specific store? The effect of male and female perfumes on customer value and behaviour

Abstract

Sensory marketing can be an efficient way to involve consumers in the store environment. Diffusing a pleasant ambient scent that matches with the store setting is often used to create pleasant shopping experiences. The aim of this study is to extend scent marketing research: (i) by examining the effect of pleasant ambient scent on the different dimensions of customer value; and (ii) by exploring whether product-scent incongruity can have a positive effect on consumer evaluations. A field experiment with 182 participants showed that a pleasant genderincongruent ambient perfume positively influences different dimensions of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. Moreover, a gender-incongruent perfume also leads to a more positive evaluation of the play, product excellence, and social dimension of customer value as compared to a gender-congruent perfume. A pleasant gender-congruent ambient perfume, on the other hand, only has a positive effect on the aesthetic dimension of customer value as compared to the absence of a perfume. The observed ambient scent effects do not differ between men and women. These results are in contrast with existing literature. However, an explanation for this undocumented effect can be found in the mate attraction theory.

Pleasing Scents: The Effect of Gender Incongruent Scents on the Repurchase Intention of the Consumers

“…Since this research is focusing on the female respondents, around 30 females were asked to sniff and evaluate the masculinity/femininity, pleasantness and stimulating nature of the perfumes. The masculinity, femininity, and pleasantness of the scents were rated over a 7-point semantic scale (Douce et al, 2016). The scents were diffused on a paper and handed over to the respondents to rate their responses.…”

“…On the other hand, incongruent scents may lead to the perceptive intrusion. However, Douce, Janssens, Weralds, and Streukens (2016) suggested that the scent of the opposite sex leads the customer's pleasure and drive for impression management.…”

Experiential tourist shopping value: Adding causality to value dimensions and testing their subjectivity

“…To support this model, our work relies on previous literature on general shopping behavior (e.g., Carpenter, ; Stoel et al, ) and on tourist/tourism shopping behavior (e.g., Sirakaya‐Turk et al , ; Yüksel, ), which assume that utilitarian and hedonic values predict customer loyalty. However, as opposed to previous causal approaches stating the simultaneous effects of value dimensions on endogenous variables (e.g., Doucé et al, ; Mathwick et al, , ; Sullivan, Kang, et al , ; Yüksel, ), our model considers a sequence of effects of experiential values (see Figure ). This chain of effects, to the best of our knowledge, has not been proven before.…”

“…To bridge this gap, this work has followed recent research calls from tourism researchers (e.g., Choi et al, 2015, p. 12; Sirakaya‐Turk et al, , p. 1882), claiming for more work to be carried out on ETSV. However, in contrast with most previous works that have modeled the simultaneous effects of experiential values on either satisfaction or loyalty (e.g., Doucé et al, ; Carlson et al, ; Gallarza, Arteaga, et al, ; Mathwick et al, , ), our work has posited two research objectives and has (a) tested a structural model with a chain of concatenated effects of experiential values and (b) built a second‐order model as a multidimensional ETSV index. Both models were tested with PLS on a convenience sample of 374 tourists shopping in the city of Valencia (Spain), a prominent shopping and tourism destination in a country with a growing fashion industry, which has a highly internationalized profile (Zara, Mango, Pronovias, and Camper).…”

“…Despite the abundant work using path modeling approaches, ESV researchers have concentrated their efforts on investigating the holistic process of the effects of value dimensions on consumer responses, rather than on the possible chain of effects of the values experienced while shopping. As a result, methodologically speaking, models have centered on testing the simultaneous effects of ESV dimensions on satisfaction and/or loyalty (e.g., Doucé, Janssens, Leroi‐Werelds, & Streukens, ; Carlson et al, ; Gallarza, Arteaga, et al, ; Mathwick et al, , ) rather than on testing their concatenated (causal) effects. However, knowing which ESVs initially attract a shopper, and how these experiential values are related to each other in terms of their positive effects on customer loyalty may add important knowledge to the existing understanding of the shopping experience.…”