Madzharov et al writing in the January 2015 issue of the Journal of Marketing explain how ambient scents can affect consumers' spatial perceptions in retail environments. Their thesis, draws on the negative relationship between social density and perceived control. They also rely on existing research which shows that:
“Powerlessness is typically an aversive state that people work to change through activities and consumption that restore their sense of power. People in a state of low perceived power place greater value on products and attrib utes that can satisfy their active goal of power restoration (Rucker, Galinsky, and Dubois 2012)”
Using an experiment with undergraduate students, the authors find that:
“in a warm scented and perceptually more dense social environment people experience a greater need for power and an increased preference for and purchase of premium products and brands”