While we all believe in the existence of free will, there are things that music can do to influence us subconsciously. In 1982 R.E. Milliman published a paper on a study he conducted in consumer locations comparing behaviour with different music played in the background.
His research discovered that by playing slower music, there was a tendency for customers to stay longer in consumer locations, and faster music influenced customers to leave earlier. I’ve had seen this in action at Christmas in supermarkets when all the staff are in and trying to get shoppers packed up, paid and out the door to cope with the peak demand. The supermarket was playing fast paced music to try to influence customers not to linger.
Conversely, if you want your customers to stay longer then slower music influences that. The results are not only about time but the effect this has on sales. Comparing the fast music to the slow music he discovered that slow music lead to a 38% increase in sales. This of course compares slow to fast as opposed to slow to no music. In terms of time spent in the location by customers; fast was an average of 108 seconds, slow was 127 seconds while no music was 119 seconds. So if no music is roughly in the middle between fast and slow music, then if you look at your sales figures for no music, then apply slow music you are probably looking at around 19-20% positive effect.
The best approach to setting up the same music design is to focus on music that doesn’t stand out to your customers as foreground music effectively. Using music that doesn’t rise to the consciousness of your customers, such as well known music licensed by the likes of ASCAP, MCPRS or SOCAN for example. Use instrumentals, i.e no vocals will help, and focus on music that represents a genre rather that is famous for its genre defying style.
