Dr Vicky Williamson writes … Recently a new Tesco Metro appeared near to where I live. They seem to be everywhere nowadays. I still prefer to visit my local shop for a bottle of milk (customer service like Mr Lees’ is hard to find) but yesterday I decided to nip into the new store on my walk home from work for a poke around.
As soon as I walked in I was struck by a feeling of familiarity. Even though this was a brand new store, I knew where everything was; I knew whereabouts different goods would be located, where special offers would be, where prices could be quickly found and how to approach the till area. It was all eerily familiar.
Of course, this visual experience is now typical of companies that have different retail or hospitality sites over disparate locations. The idea is to main consistency and synchronicity for the consumer – that way they are not put off by an unfamiliar environment and can save time in their busy schedule. Moreover, it means that our expectations are met which is an important psychological source of customer satisfaction.
The psychology of expectation is rooted deep in our evolutionary history. A successful human who will survive long enough to pass on their genes is one who can successfully generate expectations that are met by the environment. In order to facilitate this survival technique, we have an inbuilt reward system in the brain that generates sensations of pleasure when our expectations of the environment are met; we expected that the lion would walk away if we kept quiet and hidden, and we were right…bingo!
Now, back to those identical store layouts. You often hear people bemoan the lack of variety across disparate store or restaurant chains but in reality there are far more benefits to consistency and synchronicity. This strategy fulfils not only practical modern day demands but also taps into subconscious expectation-reward pleasure responses, over which we have little or no control.
The important thing about our reaction to consistency and synchronicity is that it is by no means limited to the visual domain. Indeed, if anything, our reactions are often stronger in the auditory domain. Our hearing covers 360 degrees; our full binocular vision is only about 120 degrees. Our eyes can be shut, and are shut between 4-12 times every minute; our ears are always open for business. So what we hear is an additional and valuable cue to satisfying our expectations of an environment, and music is a powerful tool in this regard.
This is because of love of music also piggy-backs on this expectation–reward system all by itself. In his book ‘Sweet Anticipation’ Professor David Huron theorises that the pleasure we get from listening to music is driven partly by our love of exercising our expectations in a safe and satisfying scenario. If we are wrong about how music might turn out then we don’t really lose anything, as there is no real harm involved; but when we are right, and music resolves as we expect, we enjoy the resulting sensation. A form of cognitive smugness is unleashed; aren’t we clever we got it right.
So music provides its own level of expectation-reward triggers and our expectations are strongest for the music that we hear often. Therefore playing music that matches familiar chord movements, tonalities and harmonies will maximise our hearing enjoyment. Then, on a second layer, playing music that is familiar with a particular environment (a store or restaurant) will trigger the same sense of calm and satisfaction as seen in my reaction to the visual layout of my new Tesco. You know where you are, you know what to expect.
Plus, if the store or restaurant has a well thought out music strategy, the consumer will also associate the music with concepts that are aligned to the brand and this will trigger a third level of expectation satisfaction.
As I was saying last week, this can occur when the characteristics of the music can become synonymous with an individual’s idea of the brand. The associations with the music ‘pop’ automatically into our head and can become part of our memory schema for the store.
These can include a sense of fun and energy, a sense of seriousness and trust, or a sense of calm relaxation. We expect a certain message from a brand and the music backs this up…fantastic!
A consistent and synchronous music strategy across disparate sites can therefore ensure a more satisfying experience for the consumer and can reinforce key ideas from brand messages. Music is also a valuable and powerful source of brand identity that comes with its own rewards built in.
You can’t ask for more than that.
Immedia
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