• Post Reply Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic
programming forums Java Mobile Certification Databases Caching Books Engineering Micro Controllers OS Languages Paradigms IDEs Build Tools Frameworks Application Servers Open Source This Site Careers Other Pie Elite all forums
this forum made possible by our volunteer staff, including ...
Marshals:
  • Campbell Ritchie
  • Jeanne Boyarsky
  • Ron McLeod
  • Paul Clapham
  • Liutauras Vilda
Sheriffs:
  • paul wheaton
  • Rob Spoor
  • Devaka Cooray
Saloon Keepers:
  • Stephan van Hulst
  • Tim Holloway
  • Carey Brown
  • Frits Walraven
  • Tim Moores
Bartenders:
  • Mikalai Zaikin

Attention marketing people!

 
author and iconoclast
Posts: 24207
46
Mac OS X Eclipse IDE Chrome
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
Lemma: if you think in a grocery store, it's bad for profits. You can comparison shop, check unit prices, etc. The more you think, the less your emotions come into play.

Theorem: the music in grocery stores -- which is remarkably similar across all chains across the whole US -- is specifically chosen to prevent you from thinking.

Observation: It's almost all the sort of Whitney Houston/Celine Dion "power ballads" that involve wailing like a decapitated banshee at the end, hitting notes not normally found in nature. This makes your skull resonate. By the time you've heard your third one, your brain is bruised and can no longer function rationally.

Hypothesis: if you wore earplugs to the supermarket, you could save ten dollars a week or more.

OK biz-school weenies who have taken marketing courses: fess up. Is this all true?
 
whippersnapper
Posts: 1843
5
  • Mark post as helpful
  • send pies
    Number of slices to send:
    Optional 'thank-you' note:
  • Quote
  • Report post to moderator
I'm not a marketing type but I've heard the music played in grocery stores (and places like Wal-Mart) is specifically chosen to keep people calm, even more specifically to keep employees calm and not to steal merchandise. (Angry, disgruntled employees steal more. At high-volume low-profit-margin kinds of retail stores, employees steal more than customers do.)

Or this could just be the kind of stuff that people repeat until you think it's true.

You're a 30-something, right, EFH? Did you notice that the Gap switched back to 30-something-friendly music sometime in the past few years? The Gap switched to teen/younger/urban music about 10 years or so ago to drive us gen-xers out of their stores. Now they're back to playing our music because they figured out we spend more than the younger crowd does. (Aside: I don't actually shop at the Gap.)

Fun book recommendation: The Savage Girl
 
Consider Paul's rocket mass heater.
reply
    Bookmark Topic Watch Topic
  • New Topic