Maybe I should state that I'm not a woman that buys perfumes, but when I visited Paris, I went to La Fayette's which is a big and famous department store there.

I entered and walked through the really dazzling ground floor area where they sold jewelry and perfumes. As I'm generally not interested in perfumes, I made my way to the staircase to get to the upper floors when a lady stopped me and gave me a little vial of perfume as a product sample. I said: "Merci beaucoup!" and walked on.

Somewhere in the upper floor while looking through the beautiful ladies clothes, I opened the vial and took in the first scent. It was beautiful! I then dabbed a little bit of this Eau de perfume on my ear lobes, it seemed to melt with my skin and the scent seemed to improve even! I really liked that and so I thought, well, while in Paris, I might just as well treat myself to something really nice if I like it so much.

I forgot all about the clothes and walked back to the perfume department. But which counter was it where the lady gave me the sample? La Fayette's is huge! So I took out the little vial again and looked if there was some writing on it. Yes. Zen - Shiseido. I will never forget the name!

Finally, I found the counter again, the lady there greeted me very friendly and I showed her the vial. She smiled and brought out an elegant black little bottle of perfume, which seemed so right to me. She wrapped it up perfectly and I paid for it. Since we couldn't communicate with words, smiles - two women understood each other.

One of the best product samples I encountered was a dandruff shampoo from Nizoral which was offered free during one of my visits at a local department store in our city. I was once a doubter of dandruff shampoos currently being offered in the market, however as I tried Nizoral shampoo on my dandruff infested hair, I really felt that this is the dandruff shampoo I've been looking, after many years of fruitless quest.

In addition, as I reflect on the product I have realized that word of mouth marketing have taken a hold on me since I constantly shared my hair experience with my friends, co-workers and neighbors, as far as Nizoral Dandruff shampoo is concerned. Furthermore, I am very thankful that I have encountered a wonderful product through the use of samples in promoting a product.

I'm glad you said "encountered" rather than just "received", because the best sample product I have encountered was when I was working in sales promotional work in supermarkets. I used to promote a variety of products, but the most memorable was Punjana tea.

As I'm English, I love my tea, so this job, which lasted 4 days was a dream for me! I had to make tea, using Punjana teabags, this is a quality Assam tea, then let my customers try it. They were also given a sample pack and money off coupons. The promotion was a great success and as a bonus I was allowed to keep the left over samples, and the company had been very generous with them!

I didn't need to buy teabags for months and after they ran out I carried on buying Punjana, it is such good tea. I now live in Spain and I can't get it here, but you can guess what any visiting friends are asked to bring can't you?