People Spend More Time in a Bookstore That Smells Like Chocolate
- 11 years ago
Researchers from the Hasselt University in Belgium have discovered that the smell of chocolate entices bookstore patrons to linger in the store for a little longer and buy certain kinds of books.
Researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium have discovered that the smell of chocolate entices bookstore patrons to linger in the store for a little longer and buy certain kinds of books.
They conducted a 10 day study to test out the effects of making a book store smell like chocolate for half of its business hours.
The study looked at customer behavior of every fifth person that entered the store, which amounted to 201 study subjects.
When the store smelled like chocolate, the subjects were reportedly less likely to review just one book before paying for it.
They spent more time browsing, and were over twice as likely to look at more than one book.
Overall sales were shown to increase when the store smelled like chocolate, and sales of romance novels and books about food and drinks went up by 40 percent.
Bookstores may want to use these findings to their advantage as face market obstacles like internet shopping and ebook sales.
According to estimates from 2011, Amazon alone had over 22 percent of the sales in the book market in the United States.
Researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium have discovered that the smell of chocolate entices bookstore patrons to linger in the store for a little longer and buy certain kinds of books.
They conducted a 10 day study to test out the effects of making a book store smell like chocolate for half of its business hours.
The study looked at customer behavior of every fifth person that entered the store, which amounted to 201 study subjects.
When the store smelled like chocolate, the subjects were reportedly less likely to review just one book before paying for it.
They spent more time browsing, and were over twice as likely to look at more than one book.
Overall sales were shown to increase when the store smelled like chocolate, and sales of romance novels and books about food and drinks went up by 40 percent.
Bookstores may want to use these findings to their advantage as face market obstacles like internet shopping and ebook sales.
According to estimates from 2011, Amazon alone had over 22 percent of the sales in the book market in the United States.