The sweet smell of advertising: the essence of matching scents with other ad cues

New technologies enable practitioners to communicate scents in advertisements on various media. The current research examines the importance of matching scent cues to the advertised product, and the joint effect of scent and other cues such as colour on consumer responses to advertising. A 4 × 2 experimental design was conducted, where participants (N = 603) were presented with scented colour print advertisements. Three hierarchical responses were measured: emotional response, attitude, and purchase intention. Findings reveal that higher congruence between scent and the advertised product heightens positive consumer response. Furthermore, this research stresses the significant joint effect of scent and colour cues, and supports the incongruence approach, suggesting that combining scents that are poorly congruent with other sensory cues enhance consumer response. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Moving up in taste: Enhanced projected taste and freshness of moving food products

Can implied motion enhance consumer judgment of food freshness and taste? Freshness plays an important role in determining anticipated taste. Different perceptual cues may influence judgments of freshness. While some cues such as coloring and bruising play an obvious role, the authors argue that cues that on face value appear unrelated to freshness may also influence judgments of freshness. Specifically, the authors argue that humans have learned to relate movement to food freshness, and that this leads perceived motion to generate enhanced judgments of freshness, and, consequently, projected taste. This proposition is demonstrated in four studies. The studies show that the inclusion of implied motion in food pictures leads to elevated judgments of freshness and projected taste.     

Assessment of rapid growth ventures,an extension of Schwartz and Moon model

It is a challenge to incorporate randomness into financial projections that are at the core of new venture assessment. We present a model based on Schwartz and Moon ( 2001 ) and apply it to a real firm data. We find that our 10‐year projections conform to the actual realized values. The model allows addressing crucial questions regarding the venture survival, its extreme potential outcomes, and its sensitivity to its parameters. It facilitates identifying risk drivers and assessing potential remedies. To our knowledge, we are the first to propose such a comprehensive stochastic model for risky ventures' simulation and analysis.