Marketing
The soundtrack to sales: How to select in-store music to boost customer satisfaction
Selecting the right in-store music is both an art and science, as it plays a critical role in shaping customer emotions, behaviors, and ultimately, sales.
January 30, 2025 by Anton Timashev — Co-Founder and CEO, Wayvee Analytics
A well-designed retail environment can have a significant impact on the shopping experience, encouraging shoppers to stay longer, spend more, and return — time and time again. Environmental psychology sheds light on how various stimuli shape shopping behavior within stores: whether customers are fulfilling routine necessities or indulging in impulse purchases, their decisions and emotional states are significantly influenced by the atmosphere of their shopping experience. This affects time spent in-store, unplanned purchases and overall sales.
Environmental stimuli can take many forms: visual elements like lighting and color, olfactory features such as scent and air quality, or spatial layout including furniture arrangement. Each of these elements plays a role in creating an engaging environment. Among them, auditory stimuli — particularly background music — stand out, with its influence in retail first introduced by Philip Kotler in 1973.
The science behind music and shopping
The Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance model explains how environmental factors in a store, such as lighting, music, and layout, can trigger emotional responses from customers. These responses fall into three categories: pleasure, arousal, and dominance.
In a retail context, the most important of these is arousal. Arousal refers to how energized or relaxed a shopper feels, and it plays a big role in their behavior. For example, when customers feel more alert and excited, they are more likely to engage with products, make impulse purchases, or explore different areas of the store. On the other hand, a relaxed environment might encourage more thoughtful browsing or longer visits without immediate purchase decisions.
Music is not just about creating ambiance — it has a direct impact on emotions, attitudes, and purchasing decisions. Elements like pitch, timbre, and especially tempo all contribute to the mood a customer experiences. Fast-tempo music, for example, increases arousal, making customers feel more active. This heightened energy can lead to more spontaneous behavior, such as expanded variety-seeking and quicker decision-making. Physiologically, faster music tempos have been shown to increase heart rate and affect breathing patterns, subtly influencing how customers move through the store. When customers are more excited or alert, they are more likely to engage with products and explore different sections.
Navigating context and emotion
However, the relationship between music and consumer behavior is not as straightforward as it might seem. The same fast-tempo music that energizes customers in one store might overwhelm them in another.
A bustling supermarket, for example, may benefit from lively, upbeat music to energize shoppers, while a high-end jewelry store might opt for slow, ambient melodies to evoke a sense of calm. However, beyond these broad approaches, the impact of music is highly nuanced. Factors like time of day, season, shopper mood, and specific store layout can all play a role.
For instance, a study by the University of Bath's School of Management found that grocery shoppers are more influenced by music during weekdays, particularly "pleasant" music. This type of music can drive sales by over 10% as it soothes customers, who are often tired after work, making their decision-making more intuitive. Conversely, on weekends, when shoppers tend to be happier, the positive influence of music is less noticeable. In fact, music in a bustling weekend environment might even reduce sales by adding stress to an already busy atmosphere.
Evaluating music's influence on shoppers
However, the effectiveness of music in shaping the shopping experience seems to remain under-researched, especially in real-world settings. Most studies focus on tempo effects, but the influence of background music on emotional pleasure in actual store environments has been previously limited to laboratory settings. Despite its importance, background music is still often chosen based on personal preferences of store managers or employees.
This gap in understanding highlights the need for tools that can measure music's real-time impact on customer responses. Traditional methods, like surveys, provide limited insights and fail to capture immediate emotional reactions. Real-time data allows retailers to adjust music on the spot, testing different playlists, tempos, or genres based on specific contexts, such as time of day or promotional periods.
Selecting the right in-store music is both an art and science, as it plays a critical role in shaping customer emotions, behaviors, and ultimately, sales. By understanding the nuances of how music interacts with other environmental stimuli and tailoring it to a store's specific context, retailers can create a shopping experience that both delights customers and drives revenue.
About Anton Timashev
Anton Timashev is an accomplished entrepreneur and innovator, currently serving as the CEO of Wayvee Analytics which is a tech company specializing in AI-powered emotion recognition technology to measure customer satisfaction and engagement in brick-and-mortar retail. Known for his strategic vision, Anton has an impressive track record in tech startups. He co-founded ZERO10, a provider of AR and AI try-on solutions for fashion retail, and played a key role at Veeam Software, where he was instrumental in developing Veeam Backup & Replication. Anton is also a co-founder of Tetrad.vc.
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Retail Customer Experience.
