If your inbox looks like anyone here at LiSTNR, it’s full of emails promising the best Black Friday deals, biggest discounts and super savings.
What was once an American tradition has now come to signal the start of the busy festive season in Australia: the Black Friday sales, which are now underway and will last right through to Monday night.
While shops won’t have to try that hard to get us in the doors this weekend and in the lead-up to Christmas, they’re using a sneaky trick to get us to spend more.
On today’s extra episode of The Briefing, we’re digging deeper into the world of Christmas songs and how they subconsciously get us to drop more cash during the festive season.
Some studies show the music a story plays can actually make you spend more than double the amount – compared to stores that don’t play music.
And it’s working: according to research by Roy Morgan, Aussies are tipped to spend a whopping $6.36 billion dollars over the next four days, with more than half of us on the hunt for cheaper Christmas gifts.
We spoke to Pr. Nikitha Gary, marketing professor at the University of New South Wales about how the experience of a store can help up spend more.
“Typically when stores play slower music, more mellow music, people tend to linger and that gets them to spend more. In terms of Christmas songs, I think it’s a little bit of a special case because these are songs that put you in a particular mood. Festive season, mood, you know, it’s gift giving season as well, gift receiving. So I think it makes people feel like they should be more generous. So to that extent, it triggers those ideas in us, make us spend more.”
If you’d like to know more, listen to today’s episode of The Briefing.