Research on how in-store music impacts the shopper experience

To face the challenges of the new retail climate, brand owners increasingly view their physical environment as an important place to satisfy their consumers.

The following article presents research on music in stores and restaurants and suggest how to use music to heighten the customer experience, increase sales and customer satisfaction. 

To provide a positive shopping experience, an important factor is to establish the store as the first choice in the consumer’s mind (Baker et al., 1992; Baker and Cameron, 1996 and Bitner, 1992).

The most successful brands use the store premises to create good customer experiences, but also to influence consumer behavior. One of the most effective tools to achieve this is music. Background music influences consumer behavior and has been widely recognized in contexts such as retail stores and restaurants (Baker et al., 1992 and Grewal et al., 2003). Several studies have confirmed that music provides pleasure and arouses consumers. (Garlin and Owen, 2006, Turley and Milliman, 2000).
Studies on in-store music have also examined how background music influences the different variables; affective, behavioral, and temporal (Jain and Bagdare, 2011). All of these studies have the same overall conclusion:

The right music is expected to make consumers feel better,

this leads them to spend more time in the store and consume more

(Turley and Milliman, 2000).

It is important to note that in a servicescape, consumers are also affected by quite a few other variables that are designed to influence behavior. Consequently, it is not only about playing music, but playing the right music for that specific context. When streaming music that is carefully handpicked to fit the brand, sales increased by 42.24% compared to no background music (Johansson& Moradi 2015)

The underlying theory of the influence of music in commercial settings is that the environment will influence a person’s emotional reactions. The emotions will affect the behavioral responses to either approach or avoid the environment (Mehrabian and Russell 2014). A recent Swedish study showed that if employees select the in-store music, the sales drop by 6% on average, and in women's clothing stores it decreases sales by 11%. (Daunfeldt, Moradi, Rudholm, Öberg)

Research shows that there is a lot to gain by playing the right music in commercial spaces. The use of music will be even more effective if you let a music branding expert do the job for you.