“You can almost smell the smoky and delicious aroma of your steak grilling to perfection” – says the radio ad for your local restaurant. But can you really ‘almost smell’ the aroma when you hear the ad? If so, how could you quantify that? A team of investigators at Virginia Tech have investigated just such a scenario. By way of a between-subjects experiment conducted on undergraduate students who listened to a set of sample radio ads like the one above, the researchers were able to make progress towards pinning down the science of almost-smelling and almost-tasting, Determining that :
“… a verbal smell reference in a radio ad significantly influences a potential consumer’s ability to almost smell and almost taste the advertised product.”
