In the aisles of discount stores, there is one thing above all: silence.
Because Aldi, Lidl and Co. deliberately do without music - Rewe, on the other hand, has its own radio station.
The backgrounds.
Munich - hand on heart: Who has noticed that Aldi, Lidl and other discounters don't play music - but they do at larger grocery stores?
Most of you have probably not noticed this detail yet.
But of course this is not a coincidence, it has an influence on purchasing behavior.
Lidl, Aldi, Netto and Co: Music affects purchasing behavior
Maybe Christmas is the moment when many customers consciously notice the music in the supermarket for the first time: When they catch themselves bobbing lightly to the beat or instead maybe rolling their eyes in annoyance when “Last Christmas” is on again .
Either way: the retail sector leaves nothing to chance when it comes to music.
When there is a lot going on in the supermarket, many customers find it unpleasant and buy less.
When there is a high density of visitors, faster music can solve this problem and thus increase sales.
This is confirmed by a study by Klemens Knoeferle of the BI Norwegian Business School and colleagues, which examined a total of 43,000 shopping carts.
The principle also works the other way around: if there is not much going on at the moment, slower music invites customers to linger - people buy more.
This was the result of a study by the University of St. Gallen.
In the book “How Advertising Works”, Christian Scheier and Dirk Held even report that playing French music increased sales of French wines in US supermarkets: customers bought wines from France three times more often.
These and other behavioral psychological findings are of course also known to corporations such as Aldi, Lidl, Netto and Co.
Sales psychology: Aldi, Lidl, Netto and Co. deliberately do without music
Jens Lönneker is a qualified psychologist and deals with depth psychological analyzes. When it comes to customer behavior in the supermarket, he differentiates between a “strolling constitution” and a “bargain constitution”. The expert explains the difference to
T-Online
as follows: Customers would know that the supermarket would be more expensive compared to the discounter, but “many still buy in large grocery stores because they consciously want to be inspired by the range on offer.” This is Lönneker's name as a strolling constitution - shopping is celebrated. That is why the music in the background is an important part of this.
In contrast, there would be the bargain constitution at the discounter: "Shopping in the discounter is much more rational and conscious compared to visiting the supermarket," Lönneker told
T-Online
. In addition, discounters live from the turnover speed, he adds. Aldi, Lidl and Co. therefore deliberately do without music, because customers spend less time in the shops.
For the grocery store Rewe, however, music is of great importance: The supermarket has its own supermarket radio with Radio Max.
You want to pick up the customer and slow down - to create a feel-good atmosphere, explains Claudia Herbst, program director at Radio Max, the principle towards
sales management.
You can also give buying impulses over the radio.
This makes it possible to increase sales by up to 25 percent on average, Herbst continues.
In the video:
With these tricks, customers save in the supermarket
No music, no problem: discounters save costs
However, there are also pragmatic reasons for not using music at discounters: The Society for Musical Performance and Mechanical Reproduction Rights, GEMA for short, charges fees for playing licensed music. Without music, there are no fees, which in turn reduces the costs for the discounters.
In response to a request from
T-Online
,
Aldi explains
that it has simply “focused on simplicity” since the beginning. Not playing music also underlines the business philosophy of the discounter. In fact, the Albrecht brothers at Aldi kept everything simple right from the start. Even when the stores were founded in 1946, shortly after the Second World War, the furnishings were kept simple, and the selection of products was limited. For example, there was no parallel article - Aldi said it “simply selected the best quality product”. And even then, one thing above all could be heard in the corridors of Aldi: silence.