Nothing is more difficult than to evoke the scent of a perfume. The bottle can provide a visual on a shelf or on screens. But the essence itself? How to make people dream, and create desire?
The image that industry will give to a perfume is determined primarily from two questions: What motivates a person to use or buy a perfume? What is the decision-making process?
The major part of the decision-making process for the purchase is happened out of the store without any contact with the olfactory scent. We can notice this case when the person is mainly attracted by advertising and the image of the brand. How can it be possible that advertising is as effective as the contents of the messages are so far from the same intrinsic characteristic of perfumes: their smell?
A characteristic of perfumes’ memories is that it is often associated with elements of life: the scent is associated with a memory, a scene or a place emotionally charged, sometimes with a person.
Mental images associated with fragrance play a key role in the decision making process among several brands.
In a first step, advertising must trigger the desire to go to the outlet to try the product. But advertising also predispose consumers to favourably assess the scent. The value of the product is thus almost entirely given by the positioning and the message of the advertising.
Finally, the second part of decision-making process occurs when the person goes to the point of sale without having already made his choice. With the ability to feel the fragrance and see the bottle, people will evaluate different brands to have an opinion on each of them. This can concern the price, appearance of the bottle, current promotions.
This is why the appearance and name are significant elements for the development of the brand image. The truth is that many perfumes have similar smells or contain similar ingredients. The marketing tools are very useful to setting one brand apart from the others. The perfume chosen will allow the buyer to strengthen his personality. The choice of the smell is of course depending on the personality, but the look and design of the product will also appeal depend on the personality of each others: colourful packaging, refine and classic styles …
In a future article we will see what elements fragrance brands rely to arouse emotions in the potential buyer.
Key figures:
For the french market, a customer spends on average 7 minutes on a point of sale like Sephora. Which makes difficult to establish a relationship with the customer and tell him the history of the perfume. This also makes the advertising very important to attract the customer. Moreover, in general, the customer is interested in its history and origin of ingredients. It’s on the Internet, that is will be able to find these information. Because he likes knows the « olfactory » speech and the aspirational and emotional speech.
In 2009, French women’s perfumes Top 3 , J’Adore, La Petite Robe Noire and La Vie est Belle * have all earned their stripes with campaigns where the juice is not mentioned. * Source: The NPD Group / panel BeautyTrends®
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