The Effects of Scent on Consumer Behaviour in Maltese Mid-Range Restaurants

Abstract

The business world is run by marketing communications. Marketeers are interested in the consumer’s decision-making process leading to a potential sale. Marketing can target any of the five senses and this research focuses on the sense of smell and ultimately its effects on the behaviour of consumers. Reference to older methodology is made along the study due to its remaining relevance to this day and age. This study seeks to assess the relationship, if any, between scents and consumer behaviour. More specifically, the objective was to assess if lavender and citrus scents impact a customer’s dining experience in terms of money and length of time spent in mid-range restaurants in Malta. The experiment in this study was conducted in three restaurants. The restaurants were chosen according to specific standards highlighted in the methodology using convenience sampling. Three consecutive Fridays and Saturdays, were allocated to test the identified scents where the start time, end time, number of guests, total experience time and sales per table were noted. Once the experiments were carried out for all three restaurants, two statistical tests were conducted to prove whether the results were statistically significant, thereby providing answers to the research question. The findings from this study suggest that scents did not statistically explain the results of time and money spent in restaurants by consumers. Following this result, a number of alternative factors for the statistical insignificance of scent on consumer behaviour, were suggested.