Do you know what I love? Walking into my supermarket the day after Thanksgiving and hearing the best Christmas music ever. Yeah! And if I wasn’t in the mood to bake Christmas cookies before I got there, just hearing that lovely music changes everything. Right there, that proves I am a quintessential, typical, impulsive consumer. That retailer’s got my number.

While I don’t want to stop loving music (I swoon to the Beach Boys during the summer months because this store has an uncanny way of knowing what I like) what I have changed is the way I hear it while loading up on groceries. They’re doing this on purpose, by design because retailers have irrefutable evidence that the right music can result in increased sales of targeted products to impulse buyers.

The Journal of Scientific Research suggests that loud music gets people to move through a store more quickly where slower and quieter music makes them stay longer and spend more money. Classical music at a restaurant makes people buy more than does pop music or no music at all. Music is like tasty bait retailers purposely thread onto the end of a sharp hook.

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