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By Marc Melnick

Most products and services are consumed and forgotten. Experiences, on the other hand, are remembered. Savvy retailers understand this concept and do everything they can to turn otherwise ordinary purchases into memorable shopping experiences that connect customers with the store's brand and keep them coming back for more.

How are retailers accomplishing this? They're using music—an invisible yet powerful tool—as part of their overall branding and marketing strategy.

Shopping is a very sensory experience, and the more senses you can involve in the sales experience, the more effective you'll be at generating an emotional response from your customers. Music is as important to the overall shopping experience as lighting, placement of merchandise, the color of the walls, the temperature of the air conditioning or heat, or the personalities and professionalism of the sales personnel. Even if your store is beautiful and everything is textbook perfect, it can still lose some if its selling clout if customers are greeted with silence.

An effective sales environment should appeal to all the senses, including hearing.

Retailers from The Baby Gap to Home Depot understand the power of music. Music can create an environment to which customers feel physiologically, psychologically and emotionally connected. We all have songs that create an emotional response, reminding us of a loved one, a first date, fun times with old friends. By tapping into the emotions evoked by music, retailers can differentiate their brand and distinguish themselves from competitors.

Here are a few tips that will help you create a musical brand for your retailing operation that can help set you apart from the others:

Understand the personality of your business.
Is it casual or formal? Serious or whimsical? Energetic or low key? To determine the personality of your store, consider its style and energy level. Do you want to put adult customers in a happy and playful mood, one that can evoke thoughts of their children, grandchildren or other young people in their lives? Do you want to engage young people, creating a comfortable environment with familiar sounds so they want to stay and shop with their parents? Do you want customers to tap their toes and sing along with the music? Or would you prefer a more reserved, laid-back ambiance? Determine your business personality and then translate it into the appropriate musical language.

What lifestyle characteristics do your customers have in common?
Too often, businesses try to target their music to suit a narrow customer demographic such as a particular age group. But since most retailers appeal to a varied customer demographic, it is often necessary to look beyond age and find commonalities of lifestyle, such as similar incomes, homes in similar neighborhoods. Hugo Boss, for example – which retails trendy, urban, upscale fashions – sells to 30 year-olds as well as to 60 year-olds.

Once you've identified their lifestyles, you can find musical attributes that will appeal to them as a group. This is called lifestyle programming. Lifestyle programming identifies musical commonalities, such as consistent instrumentation, tempo and rhythms among many different eras and genres of music. Hugo Boss customers, for example, will identify with music that is urban and cutting-edge – just like the image to which they aspire. So, unless you cater to a very niche demographic, look beyond statistics and instead identify lifestyle.

Some retailers of products and apparel for young people purposefully play music that most adults find offensive. By doing so, adults give their kids their credit cards and let them shop on their own which increases the potential for "less prudent" purchasing decisions. With juvenile retailers, however, in most instances the person who is making the final purchasing decision is the adult. For that reason, the music should be as appealing to them as to the youngsters accompanying them.

Determine how much music will be a part of the shopping experience.
Do you want your music to surround customers as they shop throughout your store, or do you want it to be more subtle? Your answer will have a lot to do with the personality of your business. For example, if a high-energy sound is not right for your store, then select music that is low-key and blends unobtrusively into the background.

On the other hand, you might choose to be more like The Gap which uses music as an integral part of its brand and buying experience. Customers who buy from The Gap are, to a large part, buying the brand's "image," and music helps define that. In spring, for example, the company's marketers are already designing a musical campaign to help sell fall and winter sweaters. Typical questions they will ask include, "What does a ‘sweater' sound like?" Perhaps it is a cool jazz sound that puts a chill in your bones, followed by a love song that feels like someone is wrapping their arms around you.

Your sound system is as important as the music.
A quality sound system is critical if you want to favorably impact customers with your musical programming. You don't want customers in one area bombarded with music while others elsewhere can hardly hear it at all. Make sure your sound system can deliver the same level of music at every spot in your store. To be effective, your sound system should bring out the best in your musical programming.

You work hard to differentiate your business from the competition. Chances are you spend a good deal of money on advertising to attract customers to your store. Don't let the experience fall flat once you've gotten them there. By integrating music into your marketing program, you can create a memorable purchasing experience that will enhance your brand image and keep your customers coming back.

Marc Melnick is general manager of Muzak Palm Beach, which is also an authorized Bose professional products dealer. As partners in sound, Muzak and Bose are the world's leading music and sound systems providers, serving local, national and regional retail chains through local Muzak franchisees. They are represented by over 200 offices throughout the United States. For more information, e-mail mmelnick@muzakpb.com or visit www.muzak.com or www.bose.com.