People rely on descriptions and images when shopping online. This works when buying anything from a phone cover to a sportscar, but may provide insufficient information when seeking specific smells or flavors, for example in scented candles, wine, beer, cheese, or coffee. People, even experts, find it difficult to describe smells and flavors, although experts, through experience, are more consistent and more accurate in their descriptions. At the same time, consumers have difficulty imagining smells and flavors from a description: the chemical senses are often ranked as being least vivid in people’s imagination. This suggests an intricate relationship between olfactory cognition, more specifically language and imagery, and expertise. This relationship is explored in a series of (online) studies on mental imagery. First, we established that experts are better at imaging smells and flavors in their domain of expertise. Next, we investigated the relationship between being able to imagine smells, and the ability to describe flavors. The results suggest some interaction between imagery and language. The novice consumer side is explored next: Can imagery ability distinguish consumers and their online purchase behavior based on flavor descriptions? We show consumers can be high and low imagers, but a wine flavor description seems to overrule other information presented – suggesting that also in the mind of the consumer, language and imagery are distinct. Finally, what type of coffee flavor descriptions are most imaginable, and are most successful to sell coffee online? In this last study, we compared different types of coffee descriptors, showing that more concrete language is more imaginable. The context of the words within the flavor description also matter for consumers when buying online. The findings of these series of experiments are discussed in relationship to sensory marketing and embodied cognition.