CHINA. Tmall, the world’s largest third-party online and mobile commerce platform for brands and retailers, has launched ‘Scent Visualizer’. The digital technology has been developed by partner, fashion and fragrance company Puig, to enable existing fragrance users and newcomers to the category to discover, recognise and visualise the scents of different perfumes.
The Scent Visualizer displays the main olfactive ingredients in a perfume which allows the user to picture, literally, how the perfume smells. It is powered by a visual library of more than 1,400 unique ingredients and a database of 21,500 perfumes.
Some 25 international brands have participated in a Scent Visualizer pilot on Tmall over a seven-week period, which the partners say delivered promising results. They noted that just by adding a simple picture for each perfume, brands’ online gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased by +5% on average.
Further, the partners revealed, both conversion rate and average transaction value (ATV) were improved, as consumers made purchase decisions more quickly when they could ‘read’ the scent.
A note from Tmall and Puig said: “Consumers were willing to pay more to appreciate the precious ingredients when those were displayed in a clear and coherent way across brands they like.”
The Scent Visualizer is a collaboration by Puig with Fragrances of the World, the most extensive and complete source of information supplied by perfume brands to the industry.
Tmall revealed that it also plans in the near future to launch the ‘Fragrance Finder’, a tool powered by Scent Visualizer. It will generate personalised recommendations for specific perfume brands and products, based on users’ preferences in terms of ingredients, perfumers, or even mood.
Puig Global Innovation & New Technologies VP Camila Tomas said: “We are happy to share our expertise and digital ecosystem of technologies to introduce more shoppers to the pleasures of fragrance.
“We have specially adapted the fragrance descriptions and visualisations to the Chinese consumer, by working hand in hand with Tmall, which has a very impressive consumer-centric and perfume expert team.
“We expect this first phase to be the beginning of a long-term collaboration which will elevate the fragrance category for China’s fragrance lovers.”
Tmall Fragrance Category Director Bao Ling said: “As China’s fragrance market continues to grow, there is tremendous interest from Chinese consumers in finding out about new fragrances, as well as buying their favourite scents.
“We are excited by the results of this initial Scent Visualizer pilot, in partnership with Puig, and look forward to seeing further growth in this category.”
Tmall and Puig observed that currently in China just 5% of the population wears fragrance (Source: BCG 2022 Report). With this in mind, Tmall said it has identified perfume as a strategic growth opportunity, particularly the category of niche fragrances.
From 2015 through 2020, the Chinese fragrance market maintained a compound annual growth rate of nearly +15%. Over the next five years, market growth is expected to surpass +22%, three times the rate of the global fragrance market (Source: Kantar & Eternal Fragrance Report 2021). 
