| Popis: |
Although retailers know that consumers do not like cluttered stores, messy layouts are sometimes inevitable. This research examines whether diffusing pleasant scents can overcome consumers' negative response to a messy store. Specifically, this study investigates the effect of pleasant scents (un)related to neatness on consumer evaluations of a tidy versus a messy store. An experiment with 198 respondents revealed that a pleasant scent not associated with neatness functions as a positively valenced prime, causing consumers to evaluate the products in the tidy store more positively than the products in the messy store. Additionally, when diffused in a messy store, a pleasant ambient scent has a negative effect on consumers' product evaluation, because of a mismatch between the pleasant scent and the unpleasant messy layout. However, this negative effect can be canceled out by diffusing a pleasant scent that is associated with neatness. |
Full Text from ScienceDirect