Part of how we experience the way something smells has nothing to do with our nose. Meg Michelsen, a professor of marketing at Longwood University, studies how scent affects consumer behavior. For one experiment, she provided the same scent to people, packaged either as “Lavender Bouquet” or “Floral Bouquet,” and asked how likely they were to buy it. The experiment determined that more people wanted to buy the less specific “Floral Bouquet.”
— Read more in How candles got so expensive: Here’s what you’re really paying for when you spend $50 on a jar of scented wax at The Washington Post.