Businesses Benefit from Consumers Who Want to Smell Like a Rose

Consumers spend billions of dollars every year around the world on products that will help improve their appearance or fragrance. Cosmetic products such as deodorants, perfumes, and makeup will create revenue of approximately $48.5 billion dollars this year in the United States. This is not including personal hygiene products such as toothpaste and soap. Procter & Gamble and Unilever, giants in the personal care industry, made more than $150 billion dollars last year on products such as Head & Shoulders, Q-Tips, and Gillette. Recently, the post-shower products have been becoming more popular, and there is an increase in options available. Products that theoretically allow people to forgo without showers are now available and used by consumers. One can go without showering for days if desired. Products that allow your clothes to smell fresh and clean can delay people from having to wash their clothes.  

Dr. Amy Derick, a dermatology instructor at Northwestern University, points out that there are more reasons that people should take showers other than for the sake of smelling good. Showering helps avoid oily hair and scalp, which prevents dandruff from formulating. Washing our face cleans impurities gathered from pollutants we encounter every day. It also helps keep bacteria in check. According to Dr. Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, people make judgments based on smell. People connect good scents to good people and bad scents to bad people. He also states that smells have an effect on people’s moods.

Companies that sell wipes for clothes aim at smokers. Smokers tend to try to mask the smell of cigarettes as it has become more noticeable due to the availability of no smoking areas in restaurants and other public places.

As the population continues to expand, the number of people in the market to buy personal hygiene products increases, which in turn causes an increase in demand.  Companies selling such products benefit from high profits and create new products that will allow consumers to smell good without the need to take showers or clean their clothing. Consumers see this as an opportunity to be lazy and not take showers even though smelling bad can potentially exclude people from socializing with others. People did not care much about how they smelled until recently when products such as perfumes were available to people other than the high class.  It has become a socially accepted view in the United States that people should shower daily and wear deodorant to avoid smelling bad, so it is no surprise that companies that sell such products gain high revenue. It is considered a necessity here, even though theoretically people can go without it and survive. Yet, in this modern world, appearances matter. For interviews and first impressions, people always want to look their best, for their futures depend on the outcome of those events. In addition, it is part of popular culture to buy perfumes and other body products. Celebrities are selling their own brands all the time. Advertisements for shampoo and acne treatments bombard the TV constantly as well. With so much pressure and influences to buy the products, consumers tend to demand it more.

Based on http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/scent-human-big-business-smelling-rose-214505745.html