Mini Critique #2: Atmospherics
In recent decades, stores, malls, restaurants, and all kinds of businesses have learned to manipulate customers’ five senses by utilizing the techniques of atmospherics, in order to push customers to spend their money impulsively and emotionally; therefore, businesses can make more profit. According to what Douglas Rushkoff argues in his book, Coercion, the floor plan, temperature, lighting, sounds, smells, and other elements are all designed to create a “consuming atmosphere”; coercive atmospherics works in a way that does not acknowledge us as humans, but rather as brains with five senses. In order to connect this concept with my everyday life, I recalled my experience at one restaurant, Palisade, which utilizes the techniques of atmospherics thoroughly to increase their profit. Palisade is a fancy American restaurant that serves fresh seafood and high-quality steak in an …show more content…
Smells are often among the less obvious but more impacting atmospherics. True coercion with our olfactory sense is achieved when scents are used to change human behavior. First, the bouquet of rose on the table makes us smell “romantic” and “love”. The more emotional we get, the more likely we will spend money. Second, Palisade has an open kitchen where customers can watch chefs cooking, and this is obviously another technique of sense manipulation. We can see what they are cooking, listen to the noise from the kitchen, and smell the food. When we were dining at Palisade, we smelled steak and it triggered us to order steak in addition to seafood. Palisade uses the “Gruen Transfer” strategy to make customers buy something that they actually don’t need. It is the moment when a person changes from a customer with a particular product in mind to an undirected impulse buyer. In this case, we didn’t want any steak from Palisade at the beginning, but we ordered it anyway just because we were lured by the
In recent decades, stores, malls, restaurants, and all kinds of businesses have learned to manipulate customers’ five senses by utilizing the techniques of atmospherics, in order to push customers to spend their money impulsively and emotionally; therefore, businesses can make more profit. According to what Douglas Rushkoff argues in his book, Coercion, the floor plan, temperature, lighting, sounds, smells, and other elements are all designed to create a “consuming atmosphere”; coercive atmospherics works in a way that does not acknowledge us as humans, but rather as brains with five senses. In order to connect this concept with my everyday life, I recalled my experience at one restaurant, Palisade, which utilizes the techniques of atmospherics thoroughly to increase their profit. Palisade is a fancy American restaurant that serves fresh seafood and high-quality steak in an …show more content…
Smells are often among the less obvious but more impacting atmospherics. True coercion with our olfactory sense is achieved when scents are used to change human behavior. First, the bouquet of rose on the table makes us smell “romantic” and “love”. The more emotional we get, the more likely we will spend money. Second, Palisade has an open kitchen where customers can watch chefs cooking, and this is obviously another technique of sense manipulation. We can see what they are cooking, listen to the noise from the kitchen, and smell the food. When we were dining at Palisade, we smelled steak and it triggered us to order steak in addition to seafood. Palisade uses the “Gruen Transfer” strategy to make customers buy something that they actually don’t need. It is the moment when a person changes from a customer with a particular product in mind to an undirected impulse buyer. In this case, we didn’t want any steak from Palisade at the beginning, but we ordered it anyway just because we were lured by the