Social Success of Perfumes

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how specific note combinations in perfumes influence their popularity, revealing key notes and accords that enhance customer ratings, and provides a network-based framework for perfumers to optimize scent compositions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network-based framework to identify influential notes and accords associated with successful perfumes, aiding perfumers in scent design.

Findings

Popular notes differ from those with the strongest rating effects.

Certain large degree notes like musk and vanilla are highly influential.

A network centrality approach highlights notes that enhance accords most.

Abstract

We study data on perfumes and their odour descriptors - notes - to understand how note compositions, called accords, influence successful fragrance formulas. We obtain accords which tend to be present in perfumes that receive significantly more customer ratings. Our findings show that the most popular notes and the most over-represented accords are different to those that have the strongest effect to the perfume ratings. We also used network centrality to understand which notes have the highest potential to enhance note compositions. We find that large degree notes, such as musk and vanilla as well as generically-named notes, e.g. floral notes, are amongst the notes that enhance accords the most. This work presents a framework which would be a timely tool for perfumers to explore a multidimensional space of scent compositions.