Music plays a subtle and overt role in the daily lives of billions of people, influencing everything from their moods to their physical activities.
It is also an important part of any business. Music can enhances the customer experience, reflects a brand’s personality and can even help increase sales if used properly. However, many business owners make the mistake of choosing music that they like instead of music that provides results. Of special note is what music does to people’s shopping behavior. Marketers can examine how music and consumer behavior interact, highlighting how businesses can effectively use music to bring their products and services closer to their customers.
Research suggests there seems to be three qualities of music that can influence buying behavior in a retail environment, tempo, volume and genre.
Tempo
In 1982, Milliman et al. conducted a study in a New York City grocery store investigating the effect of music tempo on shoppers’ buying behaviors. The experimental design was simple but the results were insightful: playing slow music led to,
significantly more time spent in the store;
significant increase (32%) in gross product sales when compared to behavior when fast music was playing.
At a restaurant, the effect of slow music tempo caused customers to spend a significantly higher dollar amount on alcohol and spent more time eating while fast music led to a faster meal and shorter wait times for incoming patrons.
Volume
Music loudness had a direct affect on the amount of time spent in stores. More specifically, loud music led to less time spent shopping compared to soft music.
Study revealed that younger shoppers are more likely to spend more time shopping when music is being played in the foreground, whereas older shoppers are more likely to spend more time shopping when music is in the background. But the fact remain, using music volume to influence consumer behavior is not a ‘one size fits all’ tactic.
Genre
It’s probably a fair guess to say that the type of music playing is one of the first characteristics shoppers notice and indeed genre has an effect of shopping behavior.
Jazz comes out ahead in certain studies when it comes to having people spend more on drinks in a restaurant after a meal while Classical music sent people home earlier than other genre.
It would appear from the various studies that choosing the appropriate music and playing it at a reasonably mid volume can lead to customers spending more time in your establishment. Choosing the right background music for your shop isn’t as easy though as ticking all the right boxes, there’s an art to optimizing the background music for the sort of shopping experience that you want to create and there is no one size that fits all.
Rather than picking songs that you like, pick songs that compliment the atmosphere that you’re trying to reflect in your store. Look no where else but MusixMusix, whether you are a cafe, restaurant, or retail store our music is psychoacoustically customized to fit your brand.
Speak to our musicians on how we can help curate a better psychoacoustic playlist for your brand. We have thousands of music that suits your brand and concept, personalize music are upon request.
In addition, all our music are guaranteed legal, and royalty paid for businesses in Malaysia. Look no where else but MusixMusix
Check out: musixmusix-royalty paid music for more details.