Effect of music types on staff - customer relationship in supermarkets.

Abstract

Music is a tool that enhances human emotion. Most of the supermarkets play various types of music to provide an entertaining environment for their customers while purchasing on shop floors. Staff - customer relationship is the most important factor as far as the supermarket business is concerned in promoting business. The objective of this study is to find the effects of music types on staff – customer relationship. The following three parameters viz; customer service, smoothness of staff– customer relationship and easiness of managing customers were conveyed. A survey was conducted with a structured questionnaire at Arpico Supercentre Kandy. Three types of English music such as Romantic and classical songs (RCS), Rock and Hip-pop songs (RHPS) and Traditional Songs (TS) were played. Then responses of twenty customers per type of music were evaluated. In total sixty customers and another ten staff members were interviewed. This study revealed that supermarket staff provided the best services to their customers while playing both RCS and RHPS, a similar trend was observed for the smoothness of staff-customer relationship. Furthermore, staffs found easy to manage their customers at the time of RCS was playing. Statistical analysis revealed that music types had significantly (p < 0.05) affected all three parameters. A significant difference (p< 0.05) was seen between RCS and TS in terms of customer service and smoothness of the relationship between customer and staff. On the contrary, the insignificant difference (p > 0.05) was observed between RCS and RHPS on the above three parameters. Therefore, this study suggests that playing music types impact human interactions and serves as a tool to make an intimate staff-customer relationship in supermarkets, thus pave ways to increase the number of loyal customers required by supermarket business.