Pleasing Scents: The Effect of Gender Incongruent Scents on the Repurchase Intention of the Consumers

Abstract

The current research aims to outspread the sensory marketing research by (1) examining whether gender incongruent scents evoke nostalgia in the customers and secondly, by exploring if nostalgia can inflict feelings of pleasure and arousal and thus drives a consumer to develop a repurchase intention. The scent chosen was a masculine scent, targeted at female consumers of clothing outlets. A scent pretest was carried out to choose the most masculine, pleasing scent followed by an experiment conducted at the Malls of Twin Cities in which 288 participants participated. The data analysis was carried out using variance based partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results confirmed that gender incongruent scents may evoke nostalgia. Moreover, creating feelings of pleasure and arousal leads a consumer to develop a positive repurchase intention. The findings of the study are important for the marketers to consider atmospheric cues as effective marketing strategies for the customer engagement in the retail settings. The research signifies the importance of scents in developing pleasure and arousal in a consumer; however, this alone is not important to develop a repurchase intention. Gender incongruent scents in addition to other ambient cues may prove to be an effective marketing tool for the marketers.