Forget TV ads and giant billboards, the next time you feel an urge to shop or gamble, your nose may be controlling your wallet and there's nothing you can do about it.
The use of perfumes to attract and keep customers in a shop or on the gaming floor is not new to Europe or the US, but in Hong Kong and Macau the phenomenon is in its infancy.
While patronage at Macau casinos needs little encouragement, the use of perfumes inside the premises poses questions about the power and ethics of scent marketing.
Olfactory stimuli, or scents, are unlikely to affect a pathological gambler so it's the occasional casino visitor that is most at risk, says Sudhir Kale, who has researched the impact of smells on consumer behaviour and is a marketing consultant for major Macau casinos including City of Dreams and Star World.
'The interesting thing is that our sense of smell is the only one that circumvents our rational sense of thinking and connects directly to the emotions. The olfactory lobes connect directly to the limbic system in the brain and that's where all our moods and emotions come from.'
An experiment in Copenhagen 15 years ago shed light on the link between perfumes and punting.