You're Being Manipulated - How Music Affects Your Buying Habits

POST : 10-10-2022

If you think music doesn't affect you, a study from Leicester University in England might have you playing a different tune at the end of this article.

 

Imagine you’re in a supermarket buying wine, and you stop at some shelves offering French and German wine. You pick up a bottle of French wine and think that today is a French wine day.

While at the checkout counter, you’re asked why you picked the wine. You respond, “The label looked great”, or “I liked the price”. Then you’re asked if you noticed the French accordion music playing when you took that bottle off the shelf. You did, you say. Did it affect your choice of wine today? No, of course not, you answer.

This was asked of all the wine buyers over a period of time, and it turned out that on the days that French music was played nearly 80% of shoppers chose French wine. While on the days that German music was, German wine was mostly bought.

 

In other words, this study found that if you bought some wine from their shelves, you were 3 or 4 times more likely to choose a wine that matched the music that was playing at the time rather than the other type.

And did the wine buyers notice? Well, when asked if the music influenced their choice, only 1 out of 44 customers said that the music was the reason they bought the wine. That's 2% of all respondents!

From the results, we could deduce that the influence of the music was huge, but the customers either didn't notice or didn't believe that it was affecting them. A few minutes or seconds of certain music was all it took to get into these people's brains in a powerful way.

Similar experiments have shown that classical music can make people buy more expensive wine.

You're Being Manipulated - How Music Affects Your Buying Habits

Here’s another study to chew on. Most of us go out to eat at least once a week. Do you know which music makes you spend more when you’re at a restaurant?

In this study, a British restaurant played pop music, classical music, and no music over the course of 18 evenings. Average spending prices per person were calculated along with the total time people spent in the restaurant.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between evenings when classical music was played and no music or pop music was played. Classical music resulted in higher spending across the board in all categories. The experiment was conducted in several different countries and has had similar results.

 

What does this mean? It’s pretty simple. Classical music relaxes and makes you feel good. And feeling good makes you want the best.

That’s why so many successful people listen to high-frequency classical music. They know it helps them work better, think better, and get higher energy levels. They know it won’t deplete them, get them distracted and raise their heart rates, as hard-hitting low-frequency music does.

The amazing effect that music has on your mind and body is being proven in study after study. It’s information that should not be ignored. Especially these days, when we’re exposed to music anytime we enter a building.

 

The same goes for the music choice you use in your videos for your ads or corporate videos. So next time, when you’re browsing through some high-quality music for your corporate video, think about how they will affect your customers and buyers.


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