The influence of background music on customers’ shopping behaviour in supermarkets

This study examines how background music is experienced and interpreted in supermarkets and how these experiences relate to shopping behaviour. Moving beyond a simple ‘positive versus negative’ dichotomy, the research adopts a qualitative, mechanism-oriented perspective to investigate when music servers as a supportive background and when it becomes a salient, potentially disruptive foreground stimulus. The research was conducted in supermarkets in the country of Georgia, and the data were collected using semi-structured interviewees with eighteen participants (fourteen customers, two store assistants, and two experts) and analysed thematically. The results show that background music generally influences emotional experience, pace, and browsing behaviour in an indirect and contingent way rather than direct behavioural control. The majority of customers associated music with comfort, relaxation, and engagement, while silence was often described as emotionally dull and acoustically uncomfortable due to increased awareness of ambient store noise. Enjoyable and congruent music was connected to slower shopping speed, longer shopping time, and increased willingness to unplanned purchases, primarily through mood enhancement and perceived time extension. However, the effects of music were not consistent. Once music becomes salience, it actually shifts from background ambience to foreground distraction, irritating, distracting, and discomforting customers while they shop. Notably, distraction was seen as related to the task. Salient music disrupted higher-effort, thoughtful purchasing moments more than it did simple, low-effort grocery choices. Across participants, tempo, volume, genre, and perceived cultural and situational fit were the key factors in whether music helped or disrupted. Preferences showed a combination of internationally known genres and local music hints, while also focusing on moderation and being non-intrusive. The study contributes context-specific evidence from an underexamined setting and refines a process-based explanation of heterogeneity of retail music effects by integrating affective response, attentional salience, and decision effort into a single interpretive framework.