Muzak

It’s not surprising that background music can have a significant effect on how people shop (fast versus slow has the expected effect on shopping and dining time, for example). I am amazed, however, that the style of music can affect what people buy. British researcher Adrian North (includes many abstracts of North’s music research) and colleagues split up a wine shelf into French and German wines. On alternate days they played French and German music.

When the tape deck wafted French accordion tunes down the aisle, shoppers bought a total of 40 French wines and only eight German wines. On days when the pounding beat of a German oompah band greeted shoppers, they bought only 12 French wines but 22 bottles of German wine.