Shopping During the Week? Background Music May Get You to Spend More
A study finds that music can add to sales—but not on weekends
2 min
Does background music encourage customers to buy more goods? Perhaps, but it depends on what day it is.
In a study based on three supermarkets in Sweden, researchers showed that background music did boost customer spending—but only Monday through Thursday.
The researchers looked at three supermarkets in Stockholm serving in total about 150,000 customers over three weeks, during which the stores switched between playing popular songs or elevator music in the background, or playing no music at all.
The type of music didn’t make a difference on purchases. But Monday through Thursday, music encouraged customers to spend more. In a follow-up experiment, the authors found that in one of those stores on weekdays, customers spent an average $23.31 per person for each excursion, compared with $14.96 when no music was playing.
On the weekends, however, the difference between having background music and no music wasn’t statistically significant.
Depleted customers
What explains the differences in shoppers’ behavior?
“On the weekdays, people tend to be more mentally and physically depleted,” says co-author Carl-Philip Ahlbom, a senior lecturer at the University of Bath’s School of Management in England. In such a state, he explains, shoppers tend to use intuitive processing, rather than active reasoning, making them more receptive to the relaxing effects of music. The music causes them to linger longer in the store, look more, and ultimately buy more items, he says.
To further test how music might affect the shopping experience, Ahlbom and his colleagues asked 600 people in the U.S. to imagine several activities that happen either on the weekend or weekday and how they felt during this activity. Then the participants were asked to specifically think about grocery shopping either on a weekday or weekend. Participants were shown an image of a shopping cart and then asked to select any item they would like to purchase from a list of 24 items. While selecting items, one-half of the participants heard music and one-half did not.
Effects of music
Afterward, the authors asked participants to rate, on a scale of one to seven, with one being “do not agree at all” and seven being “completely agree,” if they felt mentally tired, mentally worn out, stressed, anxious, happy, satisfied and excited. With seven reflecting the more positive feelings, participants who heard music on the weekdays scored 4.31 while participants who heard no music on the weekdays scored 3.96.
That is a statistically significant difference of 8.8%, says Ahlbom. There was no significant statistical difference for the two participant groups—those hearing and those not hearing music—while shopping on the weekends.
The idea, says Ahlbom, is that music makes people feel better when they are depleted and often encourages them to continue shopping. But when people are already relaxed, as they tend to be on the weekend, music has much less of an effect. “They don’t need to take the mental shortcut.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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