33. Changing Purchase Intentions Toward Bread and Pastry Products as an Example of Ephemeral Aroma Marketing

This paper demonstrates that the typical digital phenomenon of ephemeral marketing can also appear in the case of food when triggering multiple senses, such as smell and taste. Five traditional Czech bread and pastry products (BPPs) were chosen, each produced by a large national producer, a medium-sized regional producer, and a local bakery. We then aimed to identify how the selection between competing BPPs takes place with a focus on their sensory aspects. A sensory evaluation by 105 untrained consumers showed that aroma was the only sensory factor not differentiating the preferences. Two focus groups with regular consumers of BPPs explained that the aroma of certain BPP neither influences choices when eating BPP nor subsequent purchase decisions. The only exception was the traditional bread with a sourdough starter, where the aroma was essential in both sensory evaluation and focus groups. Paradoxically, during the act of shopping itself, the ambient aroma of BPPs in the store is the most significant attractor stimulating non-preferential purchasing decisions. There is a substantial decrease in the importance of the aroma of BPP when comparing the “purchase-consumption” phases. We claim that using qualitative research is crucial, as quantitative categories pre-defined by researchers for the sensory evaluation may block the evaluators from expressing “outside the box” ideas.