Harris adds multi-sensory approach to shopping

With a sense that the UK is forgetting the satisfaction of or forgetting how to DIY, the nation’s No.1 paint brush and roller brand, Harris, is doing its bit to make decorating a little more fun.

For its loyal, independent retailers, Harris is adding an experimental element to bring ‘retail neuroscience’ to the normally earnest business of supplying the service and high quality decorating products that consumers demand.

The company has been working with top fragrance house, Scent Perfique, to create a unique scent which evokes a sense of the sanctuary of home. With research from the UK and USA suggesting that consumers spend more in a scented shopping environment* Harris will be providing many of its retail partners with a specially developed scent named simply ‘Home by Harris’.

It is estimated that 95% of all purchase decisions are subconsciously driven. This provides businesses with the opportunity to guide the thinking of consumers in subtle ways, with colour, lighting, and smell.

Many successful retailers use different scents to elicit different emotions. Bloomingdales uses a coconut aroma in swimwear for a tropical paradise feel. Hugo Boss uses a musky smell with a citrus hint in its stores as a memory trigger and Langham Hotels has a lemongrass and ginger scent to create a signature memory prompt.

There is also the well-known tactic where food supermarkets vent the smell of freshly baked bread throughout their stores. There is good science and commercial theory behind such practice.

Stuart Hobbs, Sales and Marketing Director at Harris comments: “Our retail partners and customers respond well to inventive products and ideas. They like us to be innovative not only in what we sell but how we sell it.

“There is a serious element in trying to understand the complex drivers behind consumer behaviour but if nothing else we’re sending our retailers a wonderful room spray and their customers get the chance to shop in a fragrant environment.

“Changing attitudes towards DIY are both a challenge and an opportunity. We need to make DIY easier and more satisfying to do. Rather than simply commentating upon how the younger generation tend not to find pleasure in DIY like many of their parents did, we need to take responsibility to make it a more attractive proposition.”

Harris considers the multi-sensory approach used by its customers when selecting products and also uses advanced materials and ergonomics to create comfort. It has collaborated with Worcester University in a hedonomics study to make its products more visually appealing. These are the reasons the brand has recently been voted the best quality and most reliable paint brush brand in the UK and nine out of ten people who have used a Harris product would recommend it to others.**

* http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2861386/The-Buy-ology-shopping-spree-stores-like-Apple-Victoria-s-Secret-use-scent-sound-color-make-spend-money.html
** Research conducted by ORC, November 2014

Source : Harris Press Release