Exploring the Effect of Ambient Scent on Consumer Impulsive Buying Behaviour: Theoretical Insights

The paper analyses the sensory marketing of the sense of smell, its dimensions and usage in marketing decisions. By invoking the scent marketing decisions, one aims at attracting the consumer attention, to keep him/ her at a point of sale as long as possible, to affect the behaviour and encourage an impulsive process of buying decision making. The theoretical study was performed by analysing the insights of Lithuanian and foreign authors on the purpose of elaborating the coherence between the ambient scent at the point of sale and the consumer impulse buying behaviour. It was revealed during the study that the ambient scent at a point of sale can be assessed as a stimulus which invokes the consumer’s impulsive buying behaviour. The logic of the prepared conceptual model is related to S-O-R paradigm: the environmental stimulus (ambient scent at a point of sale) affects the human organism (consumer internal response) and causes reaction (consumer impulsive buying behaviour).