Adriana V. Madzharov, Lauren G. Block, & Maureen Morrin The Cool Scent of Power: Effects of Ambient Scent on Consumer Preferences and Choice Behavior The present research examines how ambient scents affect consumers’ spatial perceptions in retail environments, which in turn influence customers’ feelings of power and, thus, product preference and purchasing behavior. Specifically, the authors demonstrate that in a warm- (vs. cool-) scented and thus perceptually more (vs. less) socially dense environment, people experience a greater (vs. lesser) need for power, which manifests in increased preference for and purchase of premium products and brands. This research extends knowledge on store atmospherics and customer experience management through the effects of ambient scent on spatial perceptions and builds on recent research on power in choice contexts. Keywords: scent, store atmospherics, luxury consumption, consumer choice Adriana V. Madzharov is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management, Stevens Institute of Technology (e-mail: adriana.madzharov@stevens.edu). Lauren G. Block is Lippert Professor of Marketing, Baruch College, the City University of New York (e-mail: lauren. block@baruch.cuny.edu). Maureen Morrin is Professor of Marketing, Fox School of Business, Temple University (e-mail: maureen.morrin@temple. edu). Correspondence may be directed to the first author. This article is based on the first author’s dissertation. Financial support from the Inter- public Research Award at Baruch College, the City University of New York is gratefully acknowledged. The authors extend their gratitude to Michael Rubin and Teresa Tridente for providing the store setting and data for the two field studies. The authors thank ScentAir for providing the scent deliv- ery systems and the scents for the second field study. They also thank the JM review team for invaluable feedback throughout the revision process. Stephen Nowlis served as area editor for this article. © 2014, American Marketing Association ISSN: 0022-2429 (print), 1547-7185 (electronic) Journal of Marketing, Ahead of Print DOI: 10.1509/jm.13.0263 1 R etailers and other service providers are keenly inter- ested in managing the in-store customer experience (Kaltcheva and Weitz 2006; Otnes, Ilhan, and Kulkarni 2012). Factors such as in-store displays (Inman, Winer, and Ferraro 2009) and shelf facings (Chandon et al. 2009) have been shown to influence purchase behavior, as have atmospheric factors such as lighting, music, and color (Brüggen, Foubert, and Gremler 2011; Summer and Hebert 2001). Indeed, it could be said that companies are entering a new era of sensory marketing in which efforts revolve around engaging all five of customers’ senses to create the multisensory experience they seek (Krishna 2010). This new trend has placed more focus on the underexplored senses of touch (Peck and Wiggins 2006) and smell (Krishna 2012), with companies investing particularly heavily in scent marketing (Klara 2012). More firms are emitting specially designed ambient scents into service environments through the heating, ventilating, and air con- ditioning systems of retail stores (e.g., Jimmy Choo, Sony), hotels (e.g., Sheraton, Marriott), and banks (e.g., Credit Suisse) (Klara 2012). Some practitioners believe that after the exhaustive use of visual and auditory stimulation in the shopper environ- ment, scents are one of the few sensory tools left that repre- sent untapped opportunities (Klara 2012). This intuition is supported by some distinguishable characteristics of the sense of smell, such as that it is the most direct and basic sense and cannot be easily turned off (Herz 2010). Although, in general, people do not pay much attention to odors in the environment, ambient scents are difficult to escape, which potentially makes them subtle yet powerful influencers (Herz 2010). The rich and powerful nature of humans’ sense of smell and the wide variety of pleasant scents available to retailers make scent marketing an open and fruitful area for research (Herz 2010; Klara 2012). Scent has generated increased attention and effort from consumer psychologists as part of the broader area of sen- sory research (Krishna 2012; Morrin 2010). To date, most of the scent-related research in marketing has focused on the effects of pleasant scent on memory (Krishna, Lwin, and Morrin 2010; Morrin and Ratneshwar 2000, 2003), evaluation (Biswas et al. 2014; Bosmans 2006; Spangen- berg, Grohmann, and Sprott 2005; Spangenberg et al. 2006), and variety-seeking behavior (Mitchell, Kahn, and Knasko 1995). For example, studies have shown that under certain conditions such as congruency (Spangenberg, Grohmann, and Sprott 2005; Spangenberg et al. 2006) and fluency (Herrmann et al. 2013), pleasant ambient scents can positively affect product and store evaluations as well as consumer spending. Despite the recent proliferation of scent research, there is still much we do not know. For example, research has not addressed how scent properties other than pleasantness might influence consumers in ways that are meaningful to marketers or examined the mecha- nisms by which such properties might do so (Herrmann et al. 2013).