The Effect of Ambient Scents on Consumer Responses: Consumer Type and His Accompaniment State as Moderating Variables

The aim of this research is to study the effect of ambient scents on consumers’ responses and in particular themoderating effect of consumer type (hedonic vs utilitarian) and his accompaniment state (accompanied vssingle).An experiment was conducted in a real business context (NIKE store), where 400 customers were surveyed. Theresults indicate that a pleasant ambient scent improves evaluation of store environment, products, quality ofservices provided, the level of pleasure experienced, the level of stimulation, their intention to revisit the storeand customers’ spending. However, ambient scents have no effect on the real time spent in the store. Finally, inthe presence of an ambient scent, it was found that hedonic customers intend more to revisit the store thanutilitarian ones and that accompanied customers tend to spend more and have more fun shopping than single customers.