Scents

Cerulo found that we are pretty good at “interpreting” created scents.  She determined via focus groups that “most participants can correctly decode perfume manufacturers’ intended message.”  Common cultural knowledge underlies this ability. More on Cerulo’s work: “Manufacturers treat perfumes as targeted communication. . . . Each fragrance is invested with an intended meaning and aimed at certain types of buyers and certain sites of use. Manufacturers. . . . create olfactory codes—a grouping of scent notes that emerge from perfume formulae.

Canniford, Riach, and Hill have coined a new term: “nosenography.”  They report that “Nosenography is a theoretical and methodological commitment to uncover the presences and practices of smell, an often-ignored sensory feature of market and consumption spaces. . . . smell is a dynamic and unruly force that. . . . (i) encodes spatial assemblages with meaning and power, (ii) identifies and directly links people with spaces and (iii) punctuates movements and change in these spaces.