Toronto Star Sep. 11, 2004 (pgM4) by ELIZABETH LEE

ATLANTA—The aroma of a warm apple pie spiced with cinnamon drifts through the stainless steel kitchen at an appliance store.

Across town, the bakery smells of fresh cookies and the floral department, of flowers. Just what you'd expect. Or is it?

The nose, it turns out, doesn't know any more. These scents don't come from flowers or goodies in the oven. They're created in a lab and dispersed by machines to encourage customers to linger and spend more.

From Las Vegas casinos to upscale hotels and retailers, some businesses are tapping into smell to set a mood, establish their brand and cut through the clutter of traditional advertisements. They're moving beyond air fresheners, perfume spritzes and scented candles to sophisticated machines that emit remarkably realistic scents.

Whether scent actually turns browsers into buyers is up for debate. Yet one thing is clear: The world is getting smellier.

Roses. Birthday cake. Buttered popcorn. Fresh linen. Dinosaur dung. Rotting corpse. With the right aroma chemist, anything is possible.

ScentAir Technologies of Santa Barbara, Calif., supplies scents for purposes as diverse as military training, museum exhibits and scene-setting for a swimsuit shop.

At a recent supermarket trade show, the company had scents ranging from oranges to detergent. Director of operations Pamela Knock walked around the booth, looking for a scent stick of rotting corpse (used for virtual reality military training).

"I hope we don't have it here because it stinks," she says. "You can't get rid of the smell."

She's in luck. Traditional food-and-drink scents such as Jack Daniel's, chocolate and baking bread are what's on display at this show as ScentAir tries to woo supermarkets into trying their machines.

A handful of hospitals are trying scents to calm patients before tests. Museums are using smells such as "musty" and "ocean" to accompany exhibits.

Amusement parks are working artificial scents into movies and gift shops. Even the Hershey's store in New York's Times Square greets visitors with a blast of faux chocolate at the doorway, to supplement the aroma of hundreds of wrapped candy bars that line its shelves.

Here's how it works: Machines heat scent in liquid or gel form and disperse it into the environment, either through stand-alone devices that cover a few thousand square feet or equipment that attaches to the heating and air conditioning system and can scent tens of thousands of square feet.

Watch Tall Tales Of The South at a 4-D theatre in Stone Mountain Park, Ga., and the room fills with the scent of hot chocolate as a character makes a cup on screen. When the movie debuted two years ago, it also included a skunk scent to match another scene. The scene's still in, but not the smell.

"The problem was, it wasn't a pleasant smell, and that smell would linger," says Christine Parker, a park spokesperson. "As a new set of guests would come in to the theater, they'd ask `What's that smell?' After that, we decided to just stick to the pleasant smells."

Pam Scholder Ellen, an associate professor of marketing at Georgia State University, has studied consumers' reaction to scents. The most consistent result, she says, is that they don't like scents that don't fit with their expectations, such as suntan lotion that smells like pine rather than coconut.

Many retailers who use artificial scents don't want to discuss the marketing technique because they worry about customer perception. For that reason, it's tough to estimate how many retailers use the machines.

"All of the other senses, you think about before you respond," Ellen says. "With scent, your brain responds before you think. That's why it seems such a sneaky, manipulative thing.''

Yet, she says, it really isn't. Consumers might linger longer in a pleasant environment, but the scent alone won't make them buy.

Naturally, ScentAir and EnvironDine Studios contend it increases sales.

"It's a great impulse thing with foods," says Knock, of ScentAir. "You can zone out and walk past a lot of products, but just try to ignore your nose. It's a sale.''

AromaSys, which supplies the citrus garden aroma floating around the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas, says it just makes the air smell better and pleases guests.

In the early '90s, Alan Hirsch, neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, conducted research in a Las Vegas casino. He contends using the right kind of scent induced customers to spend 45 per cent more in slot machines. AromaSys President Mark Peltier put together the scents for that experiment. He disputes the findings. "There are not aromas that make people gamble," Peltier says. ``It's got enormous appeal for sensationalism, but it's not true."

At an appliance store in Smyrna, Ga., salesperson Rose Paul says shoppers are intrigued by the machine that turns out apple pie scents while hidden in a cabinet underneath a cooktop. They sometimes ask if they can buy a machine for their homes.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution