A Fresh Look on Old Clothes: Laundry Smell Boosts Second-Hand Store Sales
de Groot, Walther and Holland ask whether ambient odours can influence the purchase of second-hand clothing, in a sustainability setting. In a larger, pre-registered, fully counterbalanced study they replicate the finding that fresh laundry odour can boost purchasing in a second-hand store. They also add a second cleanliness priming control, citrus odour, unrelated to the products, to test hypotheses from a hedonic versus utilitarian model, and they combine this with questionnaire data.
de Groot, Walther and Holland ask whether ambient odours can influence the purchase of second-hand clothing, in a sustainability setting. In a larger, pre-registered, fully counterbalanced study they replicate the finding that fresh laundry odour can boost purchasing in a second-hand store. They also add a second cleanliness priming control, citrus odour, unrelated to the products, to test hypotheses from a hedonic versus utilitarian model, and they combine this with questionnaire data.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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de Groot, J. H. B., Walther, C., & Holland, R. W. (2022). A Fresh Look on Old Clothes: Laundry Smell Boosts Second-Hand Store Sales. Brain Sciences, 12(11), 1526. PMCID PMC9688905.