One of the first oils, soaps and lotions stores in the U.S. was opened in the Castro district in San Francisco in the early 1970s. The store was very small but had hundreds of small bottles of fragrances and even more variations of soaps, incense and body lotions.
The store was a member of the Briarpatch so I was asked to visit it often as it was growing. After a year and a half of solid and impressive growth the growth slowed down noticeably.
When I got there I checked the financials, something I have always required of businesses I consult with. Indeed the rapid growth of revenue has slowed down to a crawl.
I looked around to see what changes had been made. Only one stood out. A white soft toilet seat had been placed in a central spot above eye level on one wall. It was there because it was soft and luxurious by the owner's standard. His view was that the store was about ‘pleasuring yourself’.
I suggested the store was about a conceptual world of 'smell and scent'. In the conceptual world of smell, a toilet seat was associated with bad smells. The owner wisely took down the white soft toilet seat.
On a visit two months later, revenues were growing rapidly again. The consumer conception of the store was primarily about smells and scents. Maybe pleasure secondarily.
Business is often built around mental constructs. A brilliant audio on this is Eviatar Zerubavel. He explains why hamster food is in a section of the grocery far away from the rat poison. And why we eat herring but not goldfish.