Sensory and scent-marketing highlight how the sense of smell affects our everyday purchasing decisions. Accordingly, one expects an abundance of scented products in contemporary consumer culture. Yet, we can also witness an increasing awareness of multiple chemical sensitivities that might promote an opposite trend. This is the commercial context of a recent thesis submitted in the BBA International Program at Bern University of Applied Sciences by Jennifer Zwyer and supervised by Claus Noppeney: How prevalent is the sense of smell in today’s consumer culture? How prevalent are scented products on the shelf in supermarkets today? How openly is the olfactory status communicated to the consumer? Verbally? Visually?
Category Archives: SCI research
on our research, Wissensduft, New Scents in Action, WPP etc.
Design Research
The Design Research Methods Festival features perfumery in the context of design thinking and design-driven innovation. Continue reading Design Research
Balancing Coordination and Freedom: Learning from Perfumery as a Creative Industry
Using scent for innovating services: Opportunity for business partners in Switzerland
In today’s experience economy the service sector faces severe challenges: Services are simultaneously produced and consumed, and above all in most cases intangible. Forward looking companies increasingly use services for creating experiences that are stimulating for the customer: the more senses an experience engages, the more effective and memorable it can be. Continue reading Using scent for innovating services: Opportunity for business partners in Switzerland
Tracing Smell in Art
In the context of upcoming research on the sense of smell in contemporary art practice, Ashraf Osman recently conducted interviews with two key players in the realm: Brian Goeltzenleuchter, an artist based in San Diego, CA, and Robert Blackson, a curator based in Philadelphia, PA. The interviews focused on the norms, processes, and institutions that promote or hinder the use of the sense of smell in art. Continue reading Tracing Smell in Art
Partnering with the Art and Olfaction Awards
The 2014 Art and Olfaction Awards initiated by the Institute for Art and Olfaction (IAO) in 2013 have been a major step for the development of artistic perfumery. For its second round, the Los Angeles based institute has teamed up with the research group on scent culture at Bern University of Applied Sciences. Continue reading Partnering with the Art and Olfaction Awards
Scent in New Materialism
New Materialism is a growing movement rooted in neo-disciplines such as gender studies or science & technology studies. It challenges contemporary discourse as Karen Barad points out: “Language matters. Discourse matters. Culture matters. There is an important sense in which the only thing that does not seem to matter anymore is matter.†Continue reading Scent in New Materialism
Video on Scent Culture Research
“Interdisciplinarity” is the common theme of three videos Bern University of Applied Sciences recently posted on YouTube. One of the videos features scent culture and related research projects based at Bern University of the Arts and the Business School, two departments at Bern University of Applied Sciences. So far, the interdisciplinary approach has brought together professionals from diverse disciplines including social science, media art, visual communication, management research, psychology and curating. Continue reading Video on Scent Culture Research
Dressing for success – and scent?
The common slogan “dress for success” underlines the wide-held view that what you wear matters in everyday life. It originates in Erving Goffman’s studies on the social world as a stage. Accordingly, individuals interact as performers. In the context of management and organization studies this mode of interaction has later been labeled as “impression managementâ€. It is obvious that workplace attire is used to manage the impressions of others. Studies show that women are more interested in clothing and experience more “appearance labor†when compared to men.*
Fragrant Careers? The olfactory presentation of self at the workplace
Individuals who want to be successful in today’s career landscape have to go beyond solid performance and strong results; personal branding is an increasingly important factor as well. Impression management plays a key role in today’s professional world, and one’s olfactory appearance is an integral part thereof. Which strategies and intentions one wants to achieve with personal scent, however, have only been researched casually, at best, so far.
Thus, the leading German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, recently discussed the use of certain perfumes by representatives of a political youth organization. What message does a user of Tommy Hilfiger perfume want to convey? According to the FAZ this young politician wants to identify himself as a performance oriented achiever who spends his money on clothes that are distinctly designed for this social group.
Continue reading Fragrant Careers? The olfactory presentation of self at the workplace