When I smell something, I almost always experience positive or negative affect depending on the smell. I rarely recognize smells, though, except for very common ones. I don't expect to correctly recognize "garden" vs "forest".

I wonder if many people reliably react to scents marketed as feminine or masculine by actually identifying them. If someone used a scent marketed to the opposite sex, how many people (being in a position to smell it clearly) would notice a discrepancy? How many would dislike "inappropriate" scents more than regularly gendered ones? Have there been studies (which plausibly weren't written or published in part as PR copy?)

Even if all the answers are "no", I think the scents industry would be able to sell products as they do now, on the force of suggestion; so both "yes" and "no" answers wouldn't contradict the fact that such sales are are successful. But I wonder how much truth there is to this marketing, other than social conditioning (if even that).