Showroom Scenting: Car Dealerships and Property Sales Centres

A car showroom and a property sales centre look like different businesses, but they work the same way. The purchase is large and considered. The buyer visits more than once, often with family. Most of all, the buyer is choosing between tiers: a base trim or the top one, a two-bedroom apartment or the villa. Saudi Arabia has a lot of these rooms right now. The Housing Program reports that homeownership among Saudi families reached 65.4% at the end of 2024, ahead of its 65% target for 2025, with 70% the goal for 2030. Behind that number are hundreds of sales centres and show units. Scent vendors tell all of them that a signature scent sells. This article covers what the published research says about the one outcome a showroom cares about most, which tier the buyer chooses, and what it does not say.

The study that matters for showrooms: warm scents and premium choices

In 2015 the Journal of Marketing published The Cool Scent of Power: Effects of Ambient Scent on Consumer Preferences and Choice Behavior by Adriana Madzharov, Lauren Block and Maureen Morrin (volume 79, issue 1, pages 83–96). It is unusual in this field because two of its studies ran in real shops with real sales records, and because it proposes a mechanism rather than just reporting an effect.

The mechanism works like this. Warm scents such as cinnamon and vanilla make a room feel more crowded. Feeling crowded reduces a person’s sense of power, and people who feel less powerful compensate by choosing more prestigious products. Cool scents such as peppermint work the other way. In the authors’ pilot study, 113 participants sat in a small laboratory room. Those in the peppermint-scented room consistently underestimated how many people were in it, while those in the cinnamon-scented room estimated about right.

The eyewear store

The first field study ran for 22 days in an optics shop in the north-eastern United States: 11 days with cinnamon, 11 with peppermint and a ventilation day between them. Of 154 shoppers, those in the warm-scent period were far more likely to choose a premium frame brand: 11.4% of purchases against 3.2% in the cool-scent period. They also bought slightly more items per transaction (1.22 against 1.07). They spent more per transaction on average, $132.85 against $108.92, but that difference was not statistically significant, and the authors say so.

The campus store

The second field study ran for seven weeks in a busy university shop and covered 1,127 transactions and 1,989 items. This time there was an unscented control as well. The share of each transaction spent on premium items was 36.96% with the warm scent, 29.52% with no scent and 26.27% with the cool scent. The cool scent did not differ significantly from no scent, so the effect came from the warm scent pushing purchases up, not from the cool scent pushing them down. A fourth study found that how the salesperson treated the customer changed the effect, which means staff behaviour and scent interact rather than acting separately.

What it does not show

None of this was measured in a car dealership or a property sales centre. The premium frames averaged about $256, not the price of a car or an apartment, and all the data were collected in the United States. We could not find a peer-reviewed study of ambient scent in car showrooms or new-home sales that we were able to read at source. The research tells you the direction a warm or cool scent is likely to push a choice between tiers. It does not tell you how many more top-trim cars you will sell.

The trade-off: spacious or premium

This is where the research is most useful to a showroom, and it is rarely mentioned. The mechanism behind the warm-scent effect is that the room feels more crowded. Showrooms and sales centres spend a fortune on glass, ceiling height and empty floor precisely so they feel spacious. A warm scent works against that design. A cool scent, by making people underestimate the crowd, supports it, which is useful on a launch weekend when the floor is full.

The practical answer is to scent by zone, as we recommend for retail stores and malls. Keep the arrival area and main floor fresh and cool so the space reads as open. Use a warmer, richer scent only where the decision is made: the closing lounge, the configurator desk, the finance office or the model room where buyers compare floor plans. Our guide to fragrance families shows which families read as warm and which as cool.

Simple beats signature

The second finding to bring into a showroom concerns complexity. In 2013 the Journal of Retailing published The Power of Simplicity by Andreas Herrmann, Manja Zidansek, David Sprott and Eric Spangenberg (volume 89, issue 1, pages 30–43). Across four studies, a simple scent, which is easier for the brain to process, increased actual spending. A more complex scent had no such effect. The field study, as Washington State University described it, ran over 18 weekdays in a home-décor store in St. Gallen, Switzerland, with more than 400 customers, and compared plain orange with a blend of orange, basil and green tea.

That is a problem for the “signature scent” pitch, which usually means something intricate and unique. In an ambient setting, a single clear idea does more work. Our guide to choosing a scent for your business takes you through picking one.

Car showrooms: scent the room, never the cars

The one rule we would not bend is that the vehicles stay unscented. A buyer sitting in a car is judging the car, including how its cabin smells: leather, trim, a clean interior. Fragrance drifting into an open door hides that, and a buyer may suspect the car is covering something up. Keep diffusers away from the display vehicles and the test-drive fleet, and keep service reception, where oil and tyres smell as they should, on its own air.

Size matters more here than anywhere else. A showroom hall of 30 by 20 metres with a 6-metre ceiling holds 3,600 m³. That is more than three times the 1,000 m³ rating of a single AroSlim. Spaces like that are usually scented through the air-conditioning system; our HVAC integration guide explains when that becomes worthwhile. A standalone Aromax, rated for 250 m³, suits an enclosed closing lounge or a customer waiting room. We discuss waiting rooms separately in our guide to scenting waiting areas.

Sales centres and show homes

A property sales centre has two very different rooms. The gallery, with the scale model, the finance desk and the brochure wall, behaves like a showroom, and the zoning advice above applies. The show unit is different, because it is selling a home. A show apartment should smell like a clean, lived-in home, not a hotel lobby. That means one light note at low intensity, in line with our advice on making a home smell good. The old advice to bake bread or brew coffee before a viewing produces exactly the complex, mixed cue the simplicity research warns against.

Show villas that sit closed through a Saudi summer have their own problem. They smell stale because the air has not moved, not because they lack fragrance. As we explain in our article on home fragrance in the Saudi climate, that is an air problem. Open up and run the air conditioning well before the first viewing, and add scent after that, not instead of it.

Off-plan buyers return to the sales centre several times before they sign. That is where consistency pays: the evidence we reviewed in does scent marketing actually work? suggests scent works mainly through attention and memory, so the same scent on every visit does more than a new one each season.

How to test it in your own showroom

Copy the researchers’ method, because it is simple. Alternate scent conditions in blocks of a week or two with a ventilation day between them, and keep everything else (pricing, promotions, staffing) as steady as you can. Then compare the mix of what sold, not just footfall or total sales: the share of top-trim vehicles, or of larger unit types, in each period. Change one thing at a time. If the mix does not move, you have learned something without committing to a full installation.

Frequently asked questions

Does scent help sell cars or property?

There is no published study of scent in car dealerships or new-home sales that we could verify. The closest evidence, a 2015 Journal of Marketing study run in two real shops, found that a warm scent raised the share of premium purchases: from 3.2% to 11.4% of purchases in an eyewear store, and to about 37% of spending against about 30% unscented in a campus store. That suggests scent can shift which tier buyers choose. It does not tell you how many more cars or units you will sell.

Which scent works best in a car showroom?

Use a fresh, cool, simple scent on the main floor so the space feels open, and keep any warmer scent for the closing lounge or finance office where the tier decision is made. A single clear note works better than a complex blend.

Should the cars themselves be scented?

No. Buyers judge a car partly by how its cabin smells, and added fragrance hides the leather and trim they expect to notice. It can also make them suspect the car is covering something up. Keep diffusers away from display vehicles and the test-drive fleet.

How do we scent a large showroom with a high ceiling?

Calculate the volume: length times width times ceiling height. A hall of 30 by 20 metres with a 6-metre ceiling is 3,600 m³, more than three times the 1,000 m³ rating of an AroSlim. Spaces that large are usually scented through the air-conditioning system, with standalone units for enclosed lounges.

Should a show home smell of baking bread or coffee?

We would not recommend it. Research in the Journal of Retailing found that a simple scent increased spending while a complex blend had no effect, and food smells layered over fresh paint and furniture are a mixed cue. Ventilate the unit first, then use one light, clean note at low intensity.