Salinas-Bentley 1

Juan Salinas-Bentley
ENC1102-0M37
Dr. Guenzel
March 24, 2020
Final Draft

Being Nosey Can Make a Big Difference

The article I have chosen is "Smells Like Profit: Scents in Stores, on Products, Makes
Shoppers Buy More" by Dalia Fahmy. I wrote an article on how much scents really do impact
customers' influence on purchasing a product. I wrote about the topic since it is a huge marketing
tactic that really does go unnoticed and can really make a change in businesses everywhere. In
the article Fahmy goes on and backs up my argument about how scents in stores can affect
whether a customer buys something. It backs up my article because in my argument that I made I
talked about how scents really do help influence customers into buying products. This article was
the building base for writing my essay. My main question of the essay was to learn how a certain
smell can affect the buyers willingness to purchase an item. What people don’t realize the huge
effect that smell can have on you when you are in a store.It can change their overall mood of the
day or even in a holiday setting it can get someone excited about a holiday. For example, you
walk into a furniture store and it's the beginning of December and you smell cinnamon, it may
incline you to buy Christmas decorations or props for your house. The author uses ethos by
interviewing the chief marketing officer for a company that makes smells for companies. Ethos
is when the author is able to appeal to what the audience is looking for. In this case she
interviewed the chief marketing officer, which allows the audience to understand that this is very
important. She also includes scientific studies provided by scientists from the University of
Michigan and Rutgers University which is good credibility and ethos. Another thing Fahmy did
was use logos by using the scientific studies to help change the minds of people that could have
been on the fence of this topic. Logos is when the author uses either evidence or a definition to
convince the audience on their side. As for exigence in her article the situation was trying to
figure out how certain smells can affect a buyer's willingness to buy something. An example of
smells that were talked about in the article was they noticed that women prefer the smell of
vanilla so for items they market to women it smells like vanilla. For men they used a bourbon
smell. In the article, the author talks about how each car company produces their own new car
smell. The author has an interview with Martin Lindstrom, who is an author on many books
regarding marketing. He said “Every major car brand uses scents consistently” (Lindstrom)
which shows it is a big part of their marketing tactic. What really made this article stand out for
me was how true the whole article sounded. It made me go back and think of a new car smell and
how much I love it when my parents get a new car. The enjoyment of the smell triggers emotions
in your head and even after the purchase makes you feel satisfied with the purchase, having no
regrets. Which down the line could lead to more future business. That applies for all products
you buy that have been influenced with scents.
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The discourse in this article would have to be that the author did not go into full detail
about how the smells can help influence buyers other than talking about basic moods it might put
you in. What the author could have done to make this a better essay is really give more strong
examples like giving statistical data on how exactly stores were able to become more successful
after introducing smells. Numbers are very important in business for everyone because at the end
of the day people want to know if your business is a good selling business. No one is going to
look at anything else but sales if they’re looking for a successful business. For your average
reader, you can look at it, disagree that a smell would make you feel a certain way and make you
buy something, and then skip the article. You don't need to go into scientific details but more
than just saying that a smell makes you feel happy. I also believe the author was not able to give
two sides of the story and really only pushed for one side of the story on how smells do impact
buyers. It can be hard for the audience to truly believe the author if she shows bias in her article,
so I think just even explaining the side of how not caring about smells in stores can hurt a
business would have made the article a lot more effective. When using this article I was hoping
to find both sides of how smell can be effective and ineffective. It would help me find another
point of view that maybe another reader would have in mind that I didn’t when learning about
the article. For the audience of this article I would have to say it is for anyone interested in
marketing since this article is talking about how smells can influence buyers and moods. This is
an article talking about how the bigger companies in the world are using every little advantage to
be able to be the best businesses in the world. People that want to learn more about having a
successful business would be the best fit as it talks about how important the little details are in
running a business. It doesn’t directly talk about all the little details but it is something I picked
up while reading this and I think it is very important for everyone to take notice of that. I would
say this article used Toulmin's Model of Argumentation since the article felt very one sided in
the fact of just presenting with information on how smells really can affect a customers mood
instead of presenting two sides of the story. The author put a lot of effort in finding the
information just on looking for how the smells affect the buyer while also showing examples of
certain smells and how they can be effective.
What the reader of the article can take away from the article is that smell is a huge
important factor of marketing that literally goes right under our nose. It is used every single day
to influence people all around the world. Whether you are buying a car, buying furniture, or
going out to eat, stores worldwide are trying to lure you into buying a product that at first glance
you might not want to buy then are willing to after the smell. Something little as a new car smell
can make humans pressured into getting a new car because they love a new car smell. No matter
what you do in life this form of marketing can be used very effectively even if you don’t go into
business. When you are applying for a job you want to smell good at your interview because it
shows that you care about yourself, and if you care about yourself it can show the company that
you care what you work for as well. I was able to use this text in my research because it gave me
basic insight on how businesses everywhere use these tactics in order to get you to buy
something. It is a form of marketing that can be hidden from the naked eye and if used properly
can be very effective.
What the author's main point of writing this article was to be able to educate people on
how smells can actually help influence customers into buying products. Unfortunately, the author
did not talk about other points of view in the article so it can be a little biased towards smells
being effective but it did teach me a lot about the topic I was writing on. I think without this
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article I would not have found some evidence in proving that smells can truly affect how
customers shop. The big thing for me was her being able to bring in the chief marketing officer
which really made me believe in everything that she researched. His examples were fascinating
and truly enlightening. She was able to teach me more about how smells really do have an
impact on customers by bringing in experts in the field. Including a guy that works for Sony and
the main part of his job is to create new smells for Sony to help influence people into buying
their products. Showing that this is a huge marketing tactic this reading was very helpful for
when I was learning about the fact of how effective smells in stores actually are.

Works Cited
1. Fahmy, Dalia. (2010). Smells Like Profit: Scents in Stores, on Products, Makes Shoppers Buy
More. https://abcnews.go.com/Business/smells-profit-scents-stores-products-makes-shoppers-
buy/story?id=11053555