Getting people’s attention is the first order in the retailing business.

You can have good products, but if people don’t know about them, they aren’t going to buy them.

“You have to educate your customers to your product,” said Tara Solon, the owner of Mignonette, a women’s fashion store on Wickenden Street in Providence. “There has to be a sampling process.”

Sampling Mignonette’s “old-world” perfumes and chocolates is de rigueur for customers there.

“We give out an enormous amount of samples,” said the Providence shopkeeper.

Giving free product samples to people browsing in a store, whether a bite of chocolate, a spritz of perfume or a professional massage, is a proven way to boost sales, according to retail marketing veterans. Often, those free samples can be the reason a product becomes a hit with customers.

“Sampling is one of the best ways to acquire a loyal customer because they try and then they buy,” said Cheryl Bridges, director of the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

“Sampling is very effective at this time of year,” she said, because it “can help drive a decision” for people searching for gifts.

In November and December, shoppers are like salmon running upstream to spawn — it doesn’t take much to reel in a keeper, said the retail experts.

“One of the things we know about sampling is that they’re not just exciting people about the product, they’re evoking a feeling of reciprocity,” said Michael Levy, a Babson College marketing professor and author of the Journal of Retailing. “If somebody gives you something, you have a sense that I ought to buy something.”

But sampling’s real value is in creating an emotional connection to a store or product that will last over the long haul, the experts said.

“It creates an overall ambience for the store that this is a fun place to shop,” Levy said.

Grocery stores and other food retailers rely on sampling to get people to try new products and move food shopping beyond a rote chore.

“[We] can either be very functionary,” said Jon Arnold, director of brand marketing at Shaw’s Supermarkets, “or we can inspire people . . . to be more adventurous.”

The supermarket chain is building its sampling program to promote sales of its Essensia private-label products and premium steaks.

“We’re trying to focus on products that people don’t know we have,” he said.

Over the next several weeks, they’ll be rolling grills into their stores to show people how to cook a good steak, he said.

The company is pitching for a bigger share of consumers’ holiday budgets as it puts together product assortments fit for gift baskets. The goods are on display in Shaw’s stores, where people are encouraged to try some of the more unusual condiments and foods so they can create personalized gifts. The less adventurous can simply choose from an array of prepared gift arrangements.

Arnold said he shopped the chain’s stores with an eye toward invigorating a stale holiday food offering that changed little from season to season.

“I don’t think people would consider us as a gift location,” he said.

Sampling, even in a place where people expect it, won’t work if handled improperly, Arnold and others said.

Arnold noted that it’s useless for Shaw’s to hand out samples of peanut butter or cranberry juice because people already know where to find those foods and what to do with them.

Retailing consultant Doug Fleener agreed.

“Samples are a great business strategy, but if you don’t execute well, you’re just giving stuff away,” said the former executive at audio device company Bose Corp. and gadget retailer Sharper Image.

At this time of year, sampling’s pitfalls can get magnified, the experts said, for a variety of reasons:

•Manufacturers and shippers are running flat out, so getting products into the stores in time to boost sales is difficult.

• Stores may not have the room to set up a sampling station in a space overcrowded with other product displays and customers.

• Workers busy ringing up sales and stocking shelves may not have the time to pitch samples.

• Pressed for time themselves, shoppers may not want to waste it testing a product.

It may be better this month to hand shoppers a tiny perfume bottle, gadget or sealed product they can try whenever they want, Fleener said.

Bridges, the Texas A&M researcher, agreed.

“You have to be careful that you don’t have too many demonstrators or samplers because it can be a distraction to the shopping,” said Bridges, a former executive for both Federated Department Stores Inc. and Saks Fifth Avenue.

But the biggest mistake some shopkeepers make is never doing any sampling, Fleener noted.

“I’m always disappointed to see how many restaurants and other businesses who don’t participate” in community events, he said. “For an independent business [sampling] can really differentiate them.”

Linking the samples to a loyalty program that rewards the best customers with free stuff — available on the slowest sales days — is a good way to retain customers and boost business, he said.

For Tara Solon, the Providence shopkeeper, giving away pieces of $7 chocolate bars is a way to get browsers to linger long enough to become buyers who return time and again.

“We don’t want to have just a one-time customer,” she said.