The Effects of Music on Purchasing Behavior

Increasingly, psychological research is focusing on how music can impact emotional and mental states. Music has been part of human societies for thousands of years, but thanks to advances in scientific research and brain scans, we are able to see how music affects us, in what parts of the brain, and why.

For decades, business owners have used music to relax or invigorate their patrons. Different types of music have different psychological impacts on shopping and purchasing behaviors. For example, shoppers may feel more sophisticated while listening to certain types of music, or they may feel calmer while browsing with other music in the background. Shoppers move faster or slower, depending on the tempo of a song, and this may impact how much they purchase or how fast they eat. They may have a positive or negative experience of a store, depending on the type of music played and how that matches their demographic. Music and behavior have been shown to be correlated. There are dozens of things to consider when picking music for your business, and understanding the psychological impact of different music can help you make an informed decision.

The Parts of Music That Impact Psychology the Most

While a lot of research has been devoted to much more specific types of music and their impact on listeners or shoppers, studies have found overall that three aspects of music can change a shopper’s mood or behavior.

• Tempo: One of the most impacting aspects of music is the tempo, or how fast the beat of the song is. Studies dating back to the 1980s have reported that fast music creates different psychological effects, compared to slow music, in anyone, including people who are shopping. A 1982 study found that playing slow music in a store led to more time spent in the storefront browsing merchandise, and this translated into an associated 32 percent increase in sales. In 1999, the role of business music in the restaurant environment was examined. Researchers found that faster music led to customers eating faster while slower music led to more time spent at the table, which increased how much alcohol the diners purchased. Restaurants have benefitted both from increased sales with slower music to more rapid table turnover from faster music. A 2011 study backed up the 1982 study on tempo of music but added that mode – the harmony or melody of the music, influencing whether it was perceived as happy or sad – also influenced how much shoppers spent in stores. When the music was in the major scale, which is associated with happiness, but at a slower tempo, customers did not buy as much; however, when the mode was sad and the tempo was slower, shoppers purchased more, perhaps because the combination is considered more psychologically appropriate or familiar.
• Volume: Whether music was loud or soft greatly impacted how patrons felt about the store they shopped in. Typically, loud music causes less time spent in stores compared to softer background music. In many cases, louder music caused patrons to dislike their environment and leave more quickly, which led to a decrease in sales revenue. However, a 1988 study found that age was correlated to volume preference, which may have to do with the cultural associations different generations make with music. Younger people like louder music while older adults prefer softer or more gentle music.
• Genre: Preference for musical genre tends to be individual, so as a business owner you can focus on music for business that your shoppers’ demographic enjoys. Some studies have found that playing classical music leads to higher sales numbers, and that Christmas music is associated with buying more during the Christmas season. Jazz and lounge music appear to influence shoppers to spend more money while other genres do not often have this effect.

Successfully Combining Aspects of Music to Create a Beautiful Shopping Environment

While each of the above three aspects of music can have an impact on its own, the combination of these can have a deep impact on how customers shop, depending on what type of business you manage. There have been some specific studies on the effects of music on purchasing behavior in different environments.

• Spending on wine: A study of different genres in a wine store showed that shoppers’ perception of the wine was different and they purchased more French wine on days when French music was played. When German music was played, they tended to purchase German wines. Amazingly, shoppers reported no influence from the music on their purchases when they were asked at the end of the study, showing how subliminal the influence of even a specific genre can be. A second wine shop study found that classical music played in a wine shop influenced shoppers to purchase more expensive wines, but not more wine. When Top 40 hits were played, there was no clear influence on purchasing behavior.
• Food choices: A Scottish study involving 120 participants found that music from different cultures impacted food choices from a menu. The participants were separated into four rooms, three of which had music – American, Chinese, and Indian pop music – while the fourth had no music playing. They were then offered a menu with several items from these countries, asked to examine the menu for a few minutes, and then asked to recall as many of the menu items as they could and order one as though they were in a restaurant. When participants were listening to specific cultural music, they tended to remember items from that culture and order associated food. For example, participants listening to American music tended to remember menu items like hamburgers and French fries, and ordered those.

• Price influence: Different genres of music were found to impact how participants valued different items. A study of 180 participants were showed slides of luxury items, like cologne or gold-studded earrings, and then slides of utilitarian items, like toothbrushes or disposable pens. While listening to classical music, the participants reported that they were willing to pay more for the luxury items compared to utilitarian items; however, when listening to country music, participants reported they would pay more for utilitarian items but not luxury items. Researchers suggested that music that complements the products can increase how much money a person spends in a store.
• Purchasing intention: A 2008 study found that happy music tended to increase a person’s intention to buy items in a store compared to sad music. A 2009 study found that both scent and music matching a store’s setting influenced how long shoppers remained in the store. Another 2009 study found that family-centric music in some women’s clothing stores increased the shoppers’ intention to purchase items, along with their intention to return to the store. A 2012 study found that background music played after browsing a bookstore increased positive feelings about the store; however, playing background music before browsing did not increase positive emotions as much.
• No influence: A 2010 study conducted on purchasing behaviors in a flower shop found that people who bought flowers did not have their choices or amount spent affected by whether romantic music, pop music, or no music played in the background.

It seems that, overwhelmingly, music can impact how long a shopper stays in the store, how long they perceive they have been in the store, how much they buy, and how reasonable they believe the price to be. Creating the perfect playlist with music for retail stores for your shopping demographic can greatly influence how new and returning customers perceive your products and services.

How Music Affects the Brain

Listening to music has a huge impact on your overall health by stimulating a range of brain regions. Music can improve your memory, breathing and blood pressure, and mood.

The structural and architectural aspects of music influence your body’s rhythms. They can cause your brain to imagine what might come next in the song. Even if the music has a predictable meter, you still receive a good “workout” while listening to music, which can reduce inflammation, aging, and stress.

Here are some of the major benefits researchers have found for listening to music:

• Reduced mental illness symptoms: People with anxiety and depression experienced lower levels of stress and symptoms associated with their mood disorder when they listened to music. People over 50 years old who were actively engaged with music — listening to music, dancing to music, or playing music — reported higher levels of overall happiness and improved cognition. Musical engagement triggers pleasure centers and releases dopamine, which is important not only for feeling happy in the short term, but also for improved mental health and stress levels in the long term.
• Improved learning: Early exposure to music can improve memory. For example, a survey of people who were exposed to music more often as children found that 68 percent of those individuals reported their ability to learn new things as “excellent” or “very good.” Additionally, music has been found to improve imagination, helping the brain recap memories and past events, along with anticipating the future.
• Boosted immunity: Your immune system responds to music by boosting the presence of some antibodies, like immunoglobulin A. It also triggers higher counts of other immune-related cells, which fight against microbial invaders.
• Reduced brain aging and degeneration: Several studies have suggested that music improves memory and cognition, but these improvements can last a lifetime, including reducing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Music has also been associated with reducing seizures, changing the ability to perceive time, improving the ability to communicate with others, repairing brain damage, and evoking memories.

The PAD Model

The PAD Model refers to Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance, regarding an individual’s everyday experience of listening to music. These are the three components:

• Pleasure: rating an individual’s experiences of music on a pleasure-displeasure scale, referring to their experience of emotions
• Arousal: the degree to which the individual feels stimulated, active, and alert in their environment
• Dominance: on a dominance-submissiveness spectrum, the degree to which the individual feels they have control over their environment

Most research into music’s effect on the brain has focused on pleasure and arousal, the experience of feeling good or uncomfortable in an environment, and the degree to which this influences the person’s physical energy. Dominance over one’s environment can also influence the experience of feeling happy or anxious, and high energy or low energy.

Several studies suggest that people prefer feeling they are in control over their environment, and this produces a sense of pleasure. This association occurred whether the person felt relaxed and lower energy, or perky and higher energy.

Studies also suggest that a person’s location, activity, and sense of dominance were significant predictors for the presence of music during that activity, which were correlated to the individual’s assessment of the music. The person’s surrounding environment can influence their experience of music, but music can also influence the person’s experience of their environment.

How Cloud Cover Music Can Help

In a study of 19 participants on musical taste, researchers attempted to determine whether the participant would purchase a song or not, based on a music sample. This study highlighted activity in the nucleus accumbens region of the brain, which is predominantly involved in forming expectations. The more activity in this brain region, the more a participant was willing to spend on the song.

This study can work for your business as well. Cloud Cover Music helps you gain legal access to a huge range of music through curated playlists, which not only improve your customers’ mood and walking speed, but also increase the activity in their nucleus accumbens. This can help them to associate your brand with feeling happy, relaxed, or perky, so they are more willing to purchase your great products or services.

Sources

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• Background Music Influences Buying Behavior. (September 10, 2015). Association for Psychological Science.
• Keep Your Brain Young With Music. Johns Hopkins Medicine.
• Why Is Music Good for the Brain? (October 2020). Harvard Health Blog.
• Music Therapy for Depression. (2017). Healthy People.
• How Music Can Change the Way You Feel and Act. (February 2019). CNN.
• How Does Music Affect Your Brain? (December 2021). The University of Arizona Global Campus.
• This is Your Brain on Music. (January 2018). CNN Health.
• Music Therapy for Parkinson’s Disease. (February 2019). American Parkinson’s Disease Association (APDA).
• Your Brain on Music. Pegasus: The Magazine of the University of Central Florida.
• Conceptualizing Control in Everyday Music Listening: Defining Dominance. (2020). Sempre: Music & Science.
• Pleasure, Arousal, Dominance, and Judgments About Music in Everyday Life. (September 2016). Psychology of Music.