Woah! BusinessInsider.com on ‘sneaky ways stores trick us into spending more’, and ways we can outstmart them.

But who said we want to outsmart anyone? Isn’t retail all about being seduced? Going on a journey of fantasy and wonder that evokes our emotions and appeals to our senses as well as our social needs for interaction and validation??

Sure we need to be savvy shoppers and if we need to be frugal then we need to find ways to control our consumerist urges, but hey nobody is holding a gun to our heads. And if we don’t have some basic skill in navigating through the retail landscape then how are we to read any other life situation?

A pretty cynical look at the retail landscape, here is the excerpt on the power of scent and its connection to emotion, memory and purchasing behaviour. Apparently if I suck on a mint, it will galvanise me against scent marketing.

I wonder what the author suggests will ward off vampires?

 
Selling products is about selling emotion. How do you feel in relation to a brand? What does it evoke in you? Scent is widely considered to be our most emotional sense, due in part to our impressive capacity to recognize distinct scents: Richard Axel and Linda Buck won a Nobel Prize for their work in understanding our olfactory system, which allows us to identify and categorize 10,000 scents, all of which can trigger powerful nostalgia-laced memories. This means scent can subconsciously affect our cognition and behaviour. Studies have shown that ambient scents in a retail environment can produce positive feelings toward that brand (including your likelihood to return to the store) and affect purchasing habits. Scent marketing companies, like Scent Air, are enlisted by retailers, hotels, and restaurants to produce branded scents that build an emotional connection between consumer and brand. According to the Scent Marketing Institute, specific scents actually correlate with different consumer behaviors. For example, the scent of fresh baked goods sells more homes, the scent of leather and cedar convinces us to buy luxury furniture, and citrus encourages us to browse longer and spend more. Outsmart them: Shop on a full stomach and keep something minty in your mouth while you browse. Peppermint satiates hunger and is powerful enough to serve as a barrier to other scents that may be temptingly wafting toward you. Read more: http://www.dailyworth.com/posts/2594-6-ways-retailers-trick-you-into-spending-more/7#ixzz33aM4q2c6 This article originally appeared at DailyWorth. Copyright 2014