The Best Music for Retail Stores

As a retail store owner, you want your customers to enjoy their experience while they shop. There are many things you can do to enhance the time they spend in your store.

Colors can be carefully chosen, spacing between displays can enhance each product, and even the music playing in the background can help them relax, find what they need, find new things they want, and feel great about your brand.

In fact, music is deeply connected to our emotions, so playing retail music in your storefront can have a huge impact on the experience your customers have in your store and how they perceive your products or services. It can also have an impact on your employees. Even if you cannot make many changes to the environment around you, background music can help to reduce ambient noise from the outside world and the other customers, improve mood, reduce anxiety, and enhance focus – that is, as long as you choose the right music.

Calming music generally helps customers slow down, enjoy browsing, and relax into the retail experience. Faster music with a stronger beat can make them move or eat faster, but their mood may still be improved because they feel energetic.

Small retailers reported that in-store music choices did, in fact, impact customers: 63 percent reported music encourages customers to stay longer and 76 percent believe they can influence consumer behavior with music. Of people who like in-store music, 72 percent think having music playing in a retail space makes it more inviting.

But what kind of music makes customers do all these things? It depends a lot on genre, tempo, tone, and mode or melody. Classical music, for example, makes people willing to pay more for luxury items, such as more expensive wines even if they do not know much about wine. Luxury items like watches are perceived as even more high-end, and people in psychological studies report that they would be willing to pay more for these items compared to the items they purchase in silence or while listening to ambient noise or another genre of music. However, in stores marked as convenient, fast, or cost-friendly, playing classical music creates a dissonance with the rest of the store, and customers in these situations report feeling negatively about that experience.

If your store needs fast turnover or people to move more rapidly, consider up-tempo, happy music for retail stores instead. This kind of music can also improve your employees’ mood and focus, making customer service interactions more pleasant and helpful.

Slow-tempo pop music has been reportedly associated with more impulse purchases, so if your store focuses on novelty items or has a lot of items near the cash register, this may be a good choice for you. The most recent pop songs, as listed in the Top 40 Charts, can bring in more teenagers and young adults, and encourage them to spend more. Jazz and classic rock, on the other hand, may attract an older demographic. If your store is associated with a specific age group, consider focusing your playlist to their interests.

Planning your music – or working with a professional service to design and plan it for you – is crucial to creating the best atmosphere for your customers. Randomly shuffling from music you have licensed to play in your store is not enough. The time of day may influence the customers who come in, what they want to buy, and how willing or able they are to stay in the store for longer. However, don’t get stuck on one long song; play several songs, which can keep your customers’ minds engaged.

For example, in a study published in the Journal of Services Marketing, researchers found that women shopping in a clothing store felt the most at ease in a store if the music they heard was both familiar and happy.

Ponder Your Business Goals

While your consumers and your products will have a deep influence on the choices you make, your business goals will also help you make smart decisions.

For example, some retail outlets are designed for quick transactions. You want people to come in, find what they want, and leave again without lingering. Other retail spaces are designed for browsing. You want people to stick around.

But on the other hand, if you know your consumers will stay for a long time but you don't want them to notice, you might need entirely different music. In a study published by the Faculty of Economics and Business at Ku Leuven, researchers found that people standing in long lines were more likely to tolerate them when the music they heard was slow and calming.

Think about your goals and challenges, and find ways to make the music deliver the experiences you're hoping for.

Before getting into specific genres for specific effects, it is important to understand how to choose music for your store. Just because you want shoppers to buy your products and spend more money, for example, does not mean you should just play classical to create a sense of sophistication. That might lead to shoppers feeling disconnected because of personality and music genre dissonance. There are a few areas to consider.

People buy brands they associate with their own personality, so it is important for you to understand how these characteristics are associated with your products. This helps you design your marketing, retail storefront, and online presence.

Using these notes as a foundation, what genres should you choose from? Again, this is largely about what genres reflect your brand personality and your shoppers’ personal tastes, but different genres have been shown to affect buying behaviors across demographics in specific ways.

Some musical genres have an impact on psychology and purchasing behavior, regardless of demographic.

Variations on this playlist are strongly encouraged. The one above includes several popular, jazz, blues, cover songs, classic rock, and classical music, which can smooth the way to the cash register for your customers.

Humans have innate emotional reactions to music, so as a retailer, it is important for you to understand these reactions so you can tailor the background music to the people you want in your store. You can even attract new customers from a different demographic than your base by tailoring the soundtrack to their interests a little more. You can create a strong emotional bond between your brand personality, brand quality, and your customers, creating loyal fans who will buy and talk up your product for years.