Sniffing out the market

This week we had a rather unusual meeting.
One of our fragrance suppliers came for a visit to discuss fragrances and fragrance concepts for Air Wick in France.

 

Air Wick is an extremely complex brand, as we are not only working with different fragrance diffusers (electrical, automatic sprays, aerosols, click-sprays, candles, different types of wicks or gels), but also each of these formats has different fragrances.
In the French market, the electrical gadgets of Air Wick alone feature 11 fragrances!

This is, of course, one of the strengths of the brand because having lots of fragrances means the consumer can find their favorite one, which leads to more satisfied consumers and - hence – more sales! ( I know, this is undeniably simple!)

 

But choosing a fragrance is not as easy as it sounds.

 

First of all you have to look at the market as a whole.
Which kinds of fragrances do consumers love, which ones do they reject and which ones are potential candidates for new products?
Which ones work well in diffusers and which perfumes would be more accepted in sprays?
These are some of the questions we discussed with our supplier. The world of perfumes is somewhat subjective and so we spend a good part of the meeting smelling – of course – different fragrances and discussing (sometimes quite heatedly) their potential for the French market.

 

I did feel a bit dizzy from all the smelling after the meeting…

 

There were no decisions taken in the meeting. These things are strategic questions that need to be discussed with the global responsible managers for Airwick and tested with consumers before we could take a decision.
But it was interesting to get a slightly different view on the market.

 

One thing I found interesting was that there are some very strong cultural differences between countries.
In France, the most popular fragrance is vanilla. In Germany, it is fruity fragrances, and in the States, people love floral scents (for more info on these classifications check out the Wikipedia article on fragrance for more information.

This doesn’t make it easy for marketing, because a concept or a scent that one culture might love, could be totally rejected in another market.
So this information on consumer preferences is actually very valuable for us when it comes to choosing a new fragrance that we might introduce to the French market.