 Well, I brought you a little something. This is an air-refreshener. Wunderbaum, grüne Apfel, you might know that from being applied in your own car. Actually, I have certain associations with this product because this air-refreshener that you just saw was constantly used by my grandfather in his car. So whenever I smell this, I'm thinking about my grandfather. Well, and you might have other scents which you associate with certain episodes in your life. For example, you come into your home and you notice this familiar smell or the perfume of your loved ones or your partner has a certain meaning to you. Obviously, scents surround us there everywhere. And obviously, many companies also make use of such ambient scents. For example, in order to create a pleasant atmosphere or in order to increase something like brand recall. Well, some examples include Abercrombie and Fitch. They have a perfume called Fierce, which actually describes the scent quite nicely, I believe, and Singapore Airlines. So if you ever considered working as steward or stewardess for Singapore Airlines, you better get used to Stéphane Fluoridien waters, which is their signature scents. So scents are important for practice, but they are also exciting for researchers. Specifically, because our smell is the only scents which triggers a certain reaction without any cognitive interpretation on our side, on the side of the person being exposed to the scent. So there's lots of research actually on scents. For example, we know that certain ambient scents impact our perception of a service scape and, for example, of certain brands. Just to cite some examples. So researchers have infused a melon type scent into a supermarket, and suddenly people stayed long in the supermarket and simply bought more products. Other researchers have infused, for example, the chocolate scent into libraries, and suddenly people started buying cooking books without actually being aware why this is happening. So all these studies typically focus on short-term effects. So people are being exposed to these scents over a very limited of time. But see, this is not what reality is like. In reality, we frequent a certain service scape, a retail environment, repeatedly. So what does it do to us if there's an ambient scent in here? Similarly, these scents environments are not like in a lab, where typically these studies have been conducted. When you go to a supermarket, there are many sensory cues. So how do scents, ambient scents, work in such a setting? And finally, what happens if a retailer seeks to discontinue a certain scent campaign? How do we as consumers react to this? These are the research questions that we want to tackle. What are the long-term effects of ambient scents in sensory-rich environments? In order to assess the long-term impacts of ambient scents in sensory-rich environments, we wanted to run an experiment, long-term experiment, not a couple of hours or days, but really over a month. And for that, we needed an industry partner, an industry partner that would allow us to test these scents in the real world. We didn't have very many requirements, but that the industry partner's customers needs to be frequently visiting the corresponding service scape and that this service scape is sensory-rich, meaning there are many sensory cues that impact it. And I believe we found the perfect industry partner for that, the Deutsche Bahn, the German Railway Corporation. They were actually interested in learning about ambient scents. Can they actually use ambient scents to increase their customers' service experiences? Together with the Deutsche Bahn, we ran a series of studies. First off, we started with some pre-studies. In the very first step, we needed to identify an appropriate scent. And using a lab study, we actually did this. The final scent that was perceived as very likable and also did not trigger too much arousal, which is obviously important for Deutsche Bahn customers, comprised of violet leaves and jasmine. The second step was to find the optimal scent intensity. So how many cartridges would we use in a train that would constantly diffuse this scent into the train compartments? We had the choice between four, six, and eight. These numbers of cartridges could be installed in the AC units of the trains. So we ran a field experiment in which we systematically varied this number of cartridges, and the results were actually pretty interesting. Because what we noticed is that the respondents did not notice a special scent independent of how many cartridges we used. So it didn't matter whether we had a low scent intensity or very high scent intensity. People were not really able to identify that there was an ambient scent in the trains. At the same time, however, their perceived air quality improved as intensity increased. So if we implemented more cartridges, people suddenly thought, well, the air quality area is really nice. So with this information, we had our ambient scent and we knew the optimal scent intensity, which we then held constant in the actual main study. The main study ran for four months. During those four months, all trains operating on a specific track section in South Germany were equipped with these scent cartridges. They constantly diffused this ambient scent into the trains. We then recruited 100 commuters who regularly drive on this specific track section, meaning five days a week, both directions, and whose commute takes at least 15 minutes to ensure that they're sufficiently exposed to the ambient scent. Every two weeks, these persons were then identified on the trains and were handed out surveys. In these surveys, we asked various constructs related to, for example, their service experience, service value, and service quality. By doing so, we want to see whether their perceptions of the service changed over time because of the introduction of this ambient scent. So we had a total of nine study waves, and the first wave was baseline measurement, no scent, then we had waves two through eight where there was a scent implemented, and finally in the ninth wave, there was no scent to check for potential after effects. Needless to say, that we also had a control panel to check for any differences in order to have a standard of comparison with the actual track section. So what did we find? Well, first off, we observed significant short-term effects of ambient scent. So what happened from the baseline measurement in the first wave to the second wave when we introduced the scent, people suddenly perceived the service as of higher quality, as of higher value. This is really not surprising that has been shown a couple of times before, but we were actually really interested in the long-term effects. And here, our results were really surprising to us. What did we actually expect? Well, take an analogy from real-world, something that you can relate to. You go into a room, you notice a special scent, and after a while, the scent simply miraculously disappears. Well, it does not disappear, right? It's still there, but you simply get used to it. And we believe the same would happen long-term in our trains. People revisit the strain and they get used to it. They specifically adapt the expectation. And because of this adaption of the expectations, the long-term effects diminish. So the assessment of service experience, service value, service quality go down. We actually also believe that when you discontinue the scent in the eighth wave, the service experiences will fall below the baseline. Why is this? Well, because suddenly people are missing something. The scent is gone. And they react with a dissonance, a reactance, which is perceived as a loss. And because of this perception of a loss, the experience worsens. Surprisingly, quite the opposite was the case. All these service perceptions remained at a very high level. So there was no habituation, nothing, no decrease in the service experience, service value, service quality perceptions, even as the scent was discontinued. Why was this happening? An after study shed some light onto this. So we ran a little after study in which we debriefed the respondents and we asked them, well, can you guess why we surveyed you? Did you notice anything special? And of all the respondents who participated in all study waves, there was only a single respondent who actually indicated that he noticed some type of scent in one of these instances. But he said, I'm not sure. Maybe I just imagine it. All the other ones have not noticed any special scent. So the scent was actually processed non-consciously. And if there's non-conscious perception and processing of the scent, there is no adaption of expectations and no habituation. This explains why the service perceptions remain stable in the long run. Okay. Why is this relevant? You might ask. Well, it tells us that service providers can readily use ambient scents to increase their customer service perceptions. And not only in the short run, but also in the long run. While our study was conducted in a very specific context, well, there's no reason to believe that it would not work in other contexts like supermarkets, like cafes or fitness studios. It's also relevant because it tells service providers that they don't have to fear negative consequences when they decide to use ambient scents only for a limited amount of time. So we believe that the discontinuation of scent could lead to a reactance on the side of the consumers, but that isn't the case. So the companies can rest assured that they don't see any negative after effects after discontinuing the scent. All this is highly affordable. The design of a signature ambient scent costs between 5,000 US dollars and maybe around 55,000 US dollars, depending on the scent complexity. But you as a company can also use a pre-made, ready-made scent, like simply a lemon scent or a peppermint scent. Such a cartridge costs about 30 US dollars and lasts for about four weeks. The scent diffuser itself costs about 100 US dollars. Taking this into consideration, ambient scents are a very affordable and affordable way to increase or improve the service perceptions and kind of tangibleize the service experience. So what's next? There are actually two areas which we can look into. First off, addressing the limitations of our study and second off, looking into different phenomena that are related to scent. When it comes to the limitations of our study, future research should actually look into those after effects more strongly. Remember, we looked into the after effects by just analyzing the difference in the perceptions between the eight and the nine study waves. There were only two weeks in between these waves. This is a very short period of time. It would actually be interesting to see what happens the longer perspective, like after four, six or eight weeks. When will these service perceptions diminish over time? Similarly, future research could look into the impact on employees, people that actually work in these service scapes. This would be really interesting to see how it actually impacts their performance. Looking into the second stream, related to research, what we are currently doing is looking into the impact of different scent temperatures on consumer behavior. Well, scents can have different temperatures, warm and cold scents. Warm scents are, for example, vanilla and cinnamon. Cold scents are, for example, eucalyptus or mint. These different scent temperatures have an effect on consumer behavior. For example, researchers have shown that people that sit in a room which is filled with a mint or eucalyptus scent suddenly perceive the room temperature as colder. This is just not a perception. It actually leads them to crave for more greasy foods to offset this perception of a cold temperature. So the body really feels cold and calls for more high calorie food. On the contrary, if you're sitting in the room which is infused with a warm scent, well, the opposite happens. The body tells it's warm in here and suddenly you're eating more healthy food. Researchers have also shown that there are other ways to compensate for this feeling of warm and cold that is being triggered by the scent. For example, in a room filled with warm scents, people suddenly purchase luxury products. That's a way to compensate for this warmth because luxury products are generally perceived as rather cold. We have extended this to actually political voting behavior. We have shown that respondents actually tend to favor right-wing, meaning socially cold parties, when they're sitting in the room which is filled with a warm ambient scent. So there's lots to do here and we are looking forward to working further in this exciting research area.