The Sound of Music on the Pocket: A Study of Background Music in Retail

Influences of background music on consumer behaviour has economic potential for businesses, however, the precise parameters for manipulating these effects have remained elusive. In this study, the impact of different genres of background music on consumer spending was examined via a pilot field test conducted in three branches each of both a Japanese-themed and a Mexican-themed restaurant chain in Singapore. Three music genre conditions (‘pop’, ‘traditional’, ‘mix’), corresponding to the restaurants’ cultural theme, were played for a week in each restaurant. Data on total spending and spending per customer were collected and analysed. While direct music genre effects were not statistically significant, results indicated certain trends where higher consumer expenditure was observed in conditions utilizing a mixture of pop and traditional music (‘mix’). Specifically, spending per customer for the ‘mix’ condition was 11.4% higher than for ‘pop’ for the Japanese restaurant, whereas it was 6.3% higher for the ‘mix’ condition than for “traditional” for the Mexican restaurant. The results also further suggest that music could be tailored to different days of the week to appeal to different customer profiles and lend additional support for the leveraging of suitable music parameters to induce consumption behaviours.