“We know that there’s an 86% correlation between one’s reaction to sound and their subconscious desire to return to that space.” “How and where audio is deployed and designed can significantly impact our experiences,” said Lauren McGuire, President of Made Music Studio, a leading sonic branding agency. It’s been long established that musical style, mood and beats-per-minute can affect shopper behavior. Can you imagine listening to the same 20 songs over and over, day after day? This application of sound only scratches the surface of its potential. A common complaint of retail teams is the repetition of such playlists. Yes, Starbucks can create a buzz with 4,000+ song playlists, but most retailers limit in-store music in a way that constantly loops.

Of all experience levers that go into the design of a retail brand, sound has been the most underutilized. Experience has always been the main retail differentiator, especially as convenience increasingly becomes a rarified reason for retail to exist. The main drivers of these functions are the product, the teams of people who bring these functions to life and the overall customer experience that’s born from it. Repairing relationships with customers and.Stepping back, one could simplify retail functions as three-pronged:

And then, COVID dipped the industry into a reality check. Recently, we’ve seen a retail identity crisis, with much-hyped DTC brands and big tech giants reinventing experiences off the halo effect of the Apple retail revolution - with sometimes successful, oftentimes questionable, outcomes. Stranger Things recently reminded us how incredibly different the standard for the American retail experience was just a couple decades ago when much of social life centered on shopping malls.

U.s. retailers using planograms