Should Mary Smell Like Biscuit? Investigating Scents in Product Design

Designers can manipulate a product’s expression to influence how the product is experienced (van Rompay, Hekkert, Saakes, & Russo, 2005). To elicit the desired product experience, designers can manipulate the product information perceived through all the senses (Lindstrom, 2005; Schifferstein & Desmet, 2008). Along these lines, designers can also use odors to enhance a consumer’s experience of products. An example of such a product is Mary Biscuit. Mary Biscuit is a plastic storage box for biscuits designed by Stefano Giovannoni for Alessi (Figure 1). It was first produced in 1995 and has been a successful and well-known design product ever since its introduction (Fiell & Fiell, 2000). The lid of this storage box looks like a giant biscuit and has a vanilla scent. This scent, which complements the shape and functionality of the product, makes this biscuit box particularly original and appealing. In addition to the Mary Biscuit, the use of scents to enhance products can be seen in many places. For example, to facilitate the implementation of odors in products, producers of plastics are now offering standard plastics with added odorants (van Kesteren & Ludden, 2006). This has led to the introduction of scented packaging (ScentSational Technologies, 2008) as well as to such products as MP3 players with a choice of seven different scents, including chocolate, roses and marijuana (Foster, 2006). Furthermore, odorants can be used to communicate the scent and taste of products prior to purchase. For instance, odorized (scratch-and-sniff) samples in magazines are commonly used to let consumers experience new fragrances. In 2003 the same technique was successfully used in the Netherlands to introduce a new flavor of jam (vanilla-strawberry) by the brand Hero