Sonos Pro Editorial Team
Humans are creatures of habit, especially when it comes to shopping. Day-to-day, week-to-week, and year-to-year shopping habits settle into predictable patterns. For instance, lots of people venture out for essentials during the week, browse luxury items and accessories over the weekend, and splurge on major purchases when seasonal sales come around. But as a business owner, you can’t just rely on these habits — you need to drive the shopping behavior of your consumers with curated shopping experiences. Music is a key ingredient of these experiences.
Playing the right background music in your retail store is a powerful, cost-efficient way to align the shopping experience with customer needs.
Even established retail brands with a consistent product offering and clientele can use music to easily align with consumer habits and remain successful. This article will discuss the importance of investing in a sound system that provides your business with total control over its background music and helps you meet this challenge head-on.
Why is background music so important for retail stores?
Background music is one of the most effective tools for tailoring retail environments that align with brand goals and customer needs. It’s far less labor-intensive than repeatedly rearranging displays, altering interiors, or renovating a commercial space. When done correctly, music creates positive associations with your brand, enhancing customer experience and potentially driving purchase behavior.
The impact that your background music has on customer behavior and business performance is profound. Specifically, the characteristics of your music — the genre, tempo, and volume — are proven to influence customer shopping behavior in many ways.
Music reduces weekly stress and fatigue
Despite the fact that many people feel more drained during the week than on weekends, they still need to go shopping during the week. This means weekday shoppers are more likely to be stressed, tired, and agitated than they might otherwise be on a Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon.
Research shows that businesses can counteract those negative feelings by playing background music that creates an uplifting or relaxing retail environment. More importantly, carefully selected music also increases the number of weekday sales.
Matching genre and product category increases spending behavior
The genre of music playing in your retail store also influences your customers’ purchase decisions. But in this case, the impact depends on the type of products you sell. Studies show that classical music — which is typically associated with a high status and prestige — increases customers’ willingness to pay for luxury products like cologne, musical instruments, and jewelry.
It’s important to note that this effect occurs because of the alignment between the shopper’s perceptions of the music and the product category. For example, playing classical music does not increase the willingness of customers to pay for practical items like storage containers, laundry detergent, or batteries.
Tempo and volume influence time spent in retail stores
The tempo and volume of music also plays a significant role in customer behavior across the hospitality and retail industries. Low-tempo music encourages customers to stay longer because it’s more relaxing. While loud, fast-paced music motivates people to move more quickly through the store.
For instance, retailers selling home decor and furniture can use low-tempo, low-volume music to encourage shoppers to circulate the store for longer — increasing the chance that they come across the right product and giving your sales staff more time to work their magic.
Music improves mood and leads to better service interactions
Just like everyone else, your customers and employees have good and bad days. On those challenging days, playing music with a positive, uplifting message can help improve mood and increase the likelihood of positive experiences.
But background music doesn’t just elevate people’s moods; it also sets the stage for those key social exchanges between customers and your staff. By selecting the right playlist, you can use music as a bridge to connect the two parties and create positive interactions that solidify your store as a go-to place for your shoppers.
Hit the right note with a remote management and monitoring system
Your retail atmosphere needs to accomplish two things: amplify your brand and entice your customers.
Outdated or improvised sound systems that don’t have efficient music management features mean that you must dedicate more time to maintain a perfect sound experience. From creating processes and training staff to trusting that they can balance this responsibility with their usual tasks, the situation just isn’t ideal.
This is why sound systems that help you remotely monitor and manage the music in your retail space are so essential. If this concept is novel to you, you’re in the right place — Read on to find out everything you need to know about this powerful sound system feature.
What is remote management and monitoring?
Remote monitoring and management gives you 24/7 visibility and control over the music in your stores — from what music is playing and how loud it’s being played to overall system status and employee access privileges.
The system works by connecting high-quality wireless speakers to a central sound system through your store’s WiFi network. Then all you need is to download the powerful dashboard app on a tablet or mobile device to get any-time access to the music in your retail store. You can even add employee access as needed to ensure that only those who you trust have access to your brand’s sound experience.
Whether you have one location or one hundred, remote monitoring and management gives you the capability to control one of the most critical aspects of your retail ambiance, your background music, from anywhere.
Benefits of remote access to your retail store music
No more lack of oversight or inconsistent sound experiences — remote monitoring and management give you complete control over the music in your retail space. Below are some of the benefits you’ll unlock with a comprehensive sound system like Sonos Pro that offers remote control features.
01
Create a consistent sound experience to match your brand vision
Luxury furniture. Sporting goods. Boutique crafts. Whatever it is that you sell across your stores, you need to create a consistent sound that eases your customers toward that final sale.
Remote monitoring and management give you control over the music across all your retail stores. So, your customers know exactly what to expect when they walk into your space, regardless of the location.
02
Manage your sound from anywhere with an easy-to-use dashboard
Remote monitoring and management gives you visibility into the music, volume, and status of your sound system across each location. Need to make adjustments to the music based on the time of day? You can schedule playlists and settings to ensure that the stage is always set for ideal shopping experiences and service interactions through the easy-to-use Sonos Pro dashboard.
03
Eliminate administrative burdens and reduce employee distractions
Let your employees focus on driving sales and supporting your customers. Remote management puts you in control of your sound system by letting you select who can access your sound system and what they can do.
Delegate light administrative tasks like volume control to your most trusted staff and free up the rest of your team to focus on the work that’s most important to your business.
04
Make sure your sound system is always in good shape
With all the other factors you need to look after in your day-to-day duties, the last thing you want is to check in on the sound system at each location. With remote monitoring and management, you can quickly identify any issues with your speaker or streaming app and reboot the system remotely. If that’s not enough, you can quickly access a Sonos Pro specialist to get your sound back on track.
To fully realize the benefits of remote monitoring and management, you need to pair your sound system with both high-quality, commercial-grade speakers and a catalog of commercially-licensed music.
Amplify your retail store music experience with Sonos Pro
As pioneers in multi-room audio, Sonos has been delivering innovative sound experiences in the home for years . Now, Sonos is applying its sound expertise to a new frontier — your business.
Sonos Pro offers retailers, restauranteurs, and other business owners with the three essential components for an excellent commercial sound experience:
- High-quality WiFi speakers
- A catalog of commercially-licensed music
- A central dashboard for anytime control
Check out the Sonos Pro plan and learn about the other benefits you get in addition to remote monitoring and management.
