How Bluesound Pro Creates a Strategic Atmosphere for Commercial Spaces

How Bluesound Pro Creates a Strategic Atmosphere for Commercial Spaces - Bluesound Professional How Bluesound Pro Creates a Strategic Atmosphere for Commercial Spaces - Bluesound Professional

How Bluesound Pro Creates a Strategic Atmosphere for Commercial Spaces

There are two major factors in play when it comes to creating a meaningful audio experience for a retail or hospitality-oriented space – the right music, and the right hardware. Although these things can seem costly, the implementation of “strategic ambience”, as we like to call it here at Bluesound Professional, is more affordable than you think and can in turn be a sustainable way to help retail and hospitality businesses drive traffic and sales.

A Safe and Strategic Fourth Dimension

The traditional model of shaping brick and mortar customer experiences include having things like a great product display, brightly lit showroom, or attractive décor to attract the masses. Some go beyond the third dimension with multi-sensory experiences that speak to the senses of touch, smell and taste. However, it is difficult to implement these types of sensory experiences during a pandemic as senses like touching, tasting and smelling maybe be considered unsafe and unsanitary.

What remains is the senses of sight and sound as the means to drive customer traffic and experience. Although visual elements are typically covered and maybe even overused, the strategic use of audio is overlooked or thoughtlessly added in the curation of retail spaces. Just as a movie is both a visual and auditory experience, so should audio be prioritized in a space that relies heavily on sensory stimuli.

Multi-Sensory Experiences – a Rising Trend

Elements like lighting designs for visual appeal or smells of coffee have been commonly used to lure customers pre-pandemic. Places like museums and art galleries have always been carefully curated by artists to augment learning processes and communicate messages. With the restrictions of the pandemic preventing people from going to stores in-person, there has been a rising advancement in the field of “sensory marketing” where music and possibly sensory sound effects like subtle snaps, crackles and pops are getting introduced as part of a brand’s way to market their products. More than ever, people need a compelling reason to leave the comfort and safety of their homes and have high expectations of an extraordinary customer experience when they do make it to the shops and restaurants.

The Right Audio for the Right Space

Extensive research indicates that strategically designed audio experiences can increase sales by as much as 38% (Milliman, 1982). The alignment of ambience with brand experience and customer expectation – referred to as “congruence”, can lead to better business outcomes. A lack of congruence can have the opposite effect on a business – for example, a heavy rock playlist would drive people away from a spa, whereas the same music would attract people to go to a tattoo or piercing parlour. Music is like the heartbeat of a space. As a business owner, having full control of not only the song choices but also being able to play different songs in different zones of a space is the finishing touch in creating cohesive, immersive and exceptional customer experiences.

Music – the Finishing Touch

Thankfully there are streaming music services that handle the business side of things as well as often providing scheduling functionality and the possibility of inserting informational or promotional messaging into the audio stream. Music programming companies provide affordable and commercially licensed options for business owners. Certain business music services also offer music curators and strategic audio experience design consultations.

Bluesound Professional allows businesses to easily create a branded environment with hardware like our PoE+ powered network active loudspeakers (BSP200, BSP500, BSP1000) and network music players (B100S and B400S) that support unlimited zones of audio and natively-integrated, commercially-licensed music. Our music business partners include streaming services like SoundMachine, Custom Channels, QSIC, SiriusXM Music for Business and Tunify.

Businesses owners can now save on time and cost when elevating their retail space by creating a branded, multi-sensory experience with Bluesound Professional Products. In record time, they can seamlessly integrate a multi-zone audio system with minimal hassle and curate the right music for their spaces.

Works Cited: 1. Milliman, R. (1982). Using background music to affect the behaviour of supermarket shoppers. Journal of Marketing. 46, 86-91.

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