Hästens: Product-Fit vs. Brand-Fit Music – A Deep Dive into Sound, Sales & Perception
In a world where sensory branding is rapidly becoming a strategic necessity, background music remains one of the most underleveraged tools in retail experience design. In collaboration with Hästens — the iconic luxury bed brand — we set out to investigate one core question:
How does the type of background music affect sales performance, staff wellbeing, and customer brand perception in high-engagement retail environments?
This isn’t just another “music affects mood” story. This is a rigorous, real-world experiment with over 1,476 data points across five New York Hästens showrooms, testing three distinct music interventions:
Brand-Fit Music
Crafted playlists aligned with Hästens’ brand values: exclusive, calm, modern, down-to-earth.Product-Fit Music
Curated sleep-themed tracks echoing the product’s function — beds, duvets, linens.No-Fit Popular Music
Recognizable commercial hits with no intentional alignment to brand or product.
Methodology: A Field Experiment Built for Realism
Over a 10-month period, each Hästens store was randomly assigned one of the three music types daily, allowing us to control for time-based fluctuations and isolate music’s effect. We tracked five core KPIs:
Number of sales quotes
Sales value of those quotes
Number of confirmed orders
Total sales value
Conversion rate (quotes → sales)
We also conducted in-depth interviews with store staff to assess emotional and cognitive responses to each playlist.
Key Findings: It’s Not About the Volume — It’s About the Fit
1. Music Shapes Staff Wellbeing — Significantly
Team members voiced strong emotional reactions to different playlists. Brand-fit and product-fit music, while on-brand, were often perceived as uninspiring during slow hours.
“When we have this particular playlist (Brand-fit), everybody is like, oh God, we’re going to have to listen to this for a whole month. Shoot me.”
This underscores a critical but overlooked truth: music impacts staff performance, mood, and customer service quality, especially in low-footfall showrooms.
2. Music Influences Brand Perception — Dramatically
Customers exposed to No-Fit music perceived the brand as less luxurious, focused more negatively on price, and saw staff as less professional.
In contrast, Brand-Fit and Product-Fit music enhanced perceptions of:
Service quality
Store atmosphere
Brand credibility and exclusivity
3. Music Didn’t Drive Immediate Sales — But It Told a Powerful Story
While sales data showed no statistically significant lift, the study revealed something deeper:
For high-risk, high-involvement purchases like luxury beds, sound doesn’t trigger impulse—it builds trust.
Buying a Hästens bed isn’t a fast decision. It’s a reflection-heavy, low-frequency event. But even without direct sales uplift, the wrong music damaged brand equity, which has downstream effects on loyalty, referrals, and pricing power.
Behavioral Insight: Match Sound to Cognitive Load
Different tasks require different soundscapes:
When staff are alone, performing repetitive tasks: upbeat, familiar tracks increase energy.
When customers are present, requiring consultation and focus: calming, lyric-free music enhances communication and creates space for decision-making.
Brands need to map music to context, not just brand values.
Implications for Retail & Experience Design
One-size-fits-all music is obsolete.
Brand-fit music enhances emotional trust and reinforces premium positioning.
Staff experience matters — curate with your team’s workflow in mind.
Don’t expect instant sales from music in high-engagement categories — focus on long-term perception and differentiation.
Customize sound environments based on customer flow, time of day, and cognitive load.
Final Takeaway:
Music doesn’t just fill the silence — it defines the space.
When done wrong, it breaks the brand.
When done right, it builds an identity customers want to belong to.
Final Word: From Noise to Nuance
In a world where burnout is epidemic and attention is currency, sound is no longer background—
It’s everything.
The brands, offices, hotels, and startups that embrace audio as a core experience layer will be the ones who win hearts, minds, and market share.
If you want to build environments that feel as good as they look,
start by designing for the ears.