Can music influence what people buy?

Like, can music subtly or subconsciously change people’s behavior?

For two weeks, folks from the University of Leicester did a little field experiment.

In a wine store in the UK, they played French & German music on alternating days near a display of wines from each country.

When they played French music, French wine outsold German 5 to 1.

When they played German music, German wine outsold French 2 to 1.

When they asked people as they left the store what influenced their choice of wine, only ONE person mentioned the music.

LOLZ!

Achtung! Caveats galore, but très bien! What a lovely little study!

Some lessons:

🎷 Purchase choices can DEFinitely be influenced by unconscious factors.
🎷 Don’t take survey data at face value; often people have no clue what’s going on. (Me included.)
🎷 Get. Out. Of. The. Office! Go observe people. Do actual experiments.
🎷 If you play music in your business, pick it wisely.

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