Creating Fragrances for the Future

As we progress through the twenty-first century, theories are being built and expanded upon that are almost self-fulfilling in creating the trends 

With the powerful software currently available, it is possible to pull together information from a wide variety of sources to give the perfumer guidelines to help channel or expand creative ideas in a way that is calculated to produce a successful odour type. Traditionally, market research gathers information from consumers in retrospect, using perfumes that have been selected as appropriate for a product and measuring a response to those perfumes, which is inevitably based on experience. For a new trend-setting perfume style, we need to predict or create a popular perfume trend for the future. 

A perfume company such as Quest International establishes a perfume and product profile on the basis of large studies on consumer responses (acquired from consumers of different age groups and social profiles) to differentiate perfumes in different products in different countries, over a number of years. At the same time, a profile is built of changing social patterns and how this affects acceptance of different perfume styles. As part of our on-going studies of evaluative responses to odour types, a profile is also built of the feelings or images that are conveyed by different odours. 

The availability of evaluative and market research data together with social trends analysis and fashion information, and perfume stability and olfactory performance measures, provides the perfumer with a basis from which to work and add creative skill to develop the new fashion fragrances. 

Spence, Secret of the Senses. Internal document sponsored by ICI, 2002. 

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