How Do Clothing Store Music Affect Us?

Have you ever found yourself stepping into a clothing store and feeling like you’re in a nightclub? And that’s pretty much it, because in some clothing stores the music is loud, it’s rhythmic and marching, very fashionable and even rowdy. Why? All of this has to do with sensory neuromarketing. But how do clothing store music really affect us?

Can the music of clothing stores make us buy more? In what way? Does the type of music have anything to do with all this? What should such music look like in general? In this article, we examine the strategy used by fashion companies, and youth fashion in particular.

How do clothing store music affect us?

According to Sánchez (2015), “ music is part of all the elements of the human and social dimension that we sometimes don’t even know ourselves” . The reality is that the music of clothing stores and stores affects the mood, which in turn influences the purchasing decision we make.

Companies are increasingly investing in sensory marketing, or sensory neuromarketing, which directly affects our senses to stimulate the urge to buy. Within this type of marketing, we can find a variety of techniques designed to stimulate hearing – in this case, through music.

Thus, in-store music is not usually chosen at random. This is because the type of music, such as very tense music, stimulates impulsive buying behavior. How, then, do the music of clothing stores affect us? Well, it does that by limiting our self-control, influencing our emotions and moods, and ultimately making us buy more or less impulsively.

Just rhythmic music?

Of course, boisterous and rhythmic music is not the only music we can hear in clothing stores. The choice of music type actually depends on the target, i.e. the target audience that the music is intended to motivate to buy.

Therefore, rhythmic music tends to be played in clothing stores aimed at young customers, but in stores aimed at older audiences, many companies and organizations have opted for more relaxing and quieter music that stimulates calmness and relaxation. Logically, all this depends, among other things, on the type of customer and the type of clothing sold in the store. By all this, we mean that the brand adapts to the customer to increase sales.

Saturation of the senses

Music playing at a high volume overwhelms our senses and makes us analyze decisions less than normal (in this case, buying clothes). High, very fast-paced and tense music can make us express more impulsiveness when it comes to shopping. Because our senses are overloaded, we don’t have as much space to meditate or think because our attentive cognitive system is saturated with music, so there’s no room for anything else.

In clothing stores in particular, music is often aimed especially at young customers, whose shopping behavior is often more impulsive than that of older people. Thus, in a target group that is already impulsive, music further influences their decision to buy compulsively and uncontrollably. Logically, music affects each person differently, albeit by the same means in all these cases.

Stimulation of pleasure

In addition to stimulating impulsivity when shopping, music also promotes a pleasant sensory experience in the store. This way, when we feel good, we are likely to spend more time inside the store, which in turn increases the likelihood of buying.

In this way, music can improve mood, dispel worries and make us encourage ourselves to buy (more). In addition, combining the clothing store, or any other store, with a positive experience and a good mood makes us loyal customers, which in turn tends to come back to the same store over and over again.

Sensory neuromarketing: art or manipulation?

We have seen how the type of music affects our buying behavior. Maybe we enter the store discouraged, indecisive, or disturbed… But music makes us unite with emotion, impulsive behavior, or “need” to buy, which naturally promotes our decision to buy something from that store.

This is already mentioned by sensory neuromarketing, which explores, nourishes, and applies knowledge of sensory neurobiology from a marketing perspective. To this end, it examines sensory observations in depth to analyze how sensory stimulation influences the purchasing decision.

And that is, in reality, we are “manipulated,” even though it is a perfectly legal technique. However, it’s good to keep in mind that knowing this technology can help us be more careful next time we buy things we don’t really need. In other words, teach us to make more responsible purchases. So is neuromarketing an art or a manipulation? How far do marketing boundaries go? Be that as it may, we cannot deny at all that the impact of this kind of marketing on us would not be significant.