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Ulster, UK (pte026/24.06.2005/15:25) - If you want a man to buy a certain product, give it a dash of his own sweat, new research shows.
Michael Kirk-Smith, from the University of Ulster, UK http://www2.ulster.ac.uk/staff/md.kirk-smith.html , and Claus Ebster, from the University of Vienna, Austria http://www.lbs.ac.at/cv_ebster.html , found that men who were influenced by androstenol - a pheromone found in their underarm sweat - were more likely to buy a men's lifestyle magazine than those not under its influence.
The study involved 120 students - women and men - and three different magazines: the women's lifestyle magazine Allure, the neutrally pitched National Geographic, and the men's lifestyle magazine Men's Health. The students were split into two groups with equal men and women. One group wore masks sprayed with androstenol and the second wore a mask permeated with a control solvent. Both solvents had an imperceptible odour.
Both groups then evaluated the magazines according to how masculine and appealing they found them, and the likelihood that they would buy them. The males exposed to androstenol gave Men's Health a higher rating than those from the control group, and also said they might buy the magazine. Women seemed to be uninfluenced by the pheromone.
According to Kirk-Smith, this is the first study to show the influence of pheromone on consumer behaviour. "This opens up the possibility of using odours to give specific emotional meaning to products - and creates ethical issues about whether this should be done if they are used at imperceptible levels," he said. However, the human male pheromone can only influence judgements of a gender-related product purchase if it is already considered masculine, the researcher added.
Nick Neave, an expert on how hormones affect behaviour at the University of Northumberland in the UK commented: "It's very interesting that the study has applied pheromone research to marketing and consumer psychology, and it's rare to give same-sex pheromones to participants in this way."
However, he added: "In the real world, especially in the consumer environment, there are so many different influences competing for your attention, that it's unlikely one factor such as androstenol could make you pick one magazine over another."
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