are not premeditated but arise as a result of in-store browsing (Yelanjian 1991). If this is so, it helps to highlight the extent to which at least some forms of action are locally organized and so illuminates the notion that subjectivity may be constructed in and through reference to cultural materials as these are encountered during a course of action.

Bearing in mind the significance of the browser, then, the project of configuring consumers and enrolling them into certain emotional states commensurate with displayed goods – seducing consumers – is therefore of paramount importance to retailers. As the ‘food of love’, music is perhaps the medium par excellence for igniting such passions and for structuring in-store subjectivity. In conjunction with window displays, décor, assistants dressed in employee-discounted merchandise and, indeed, the merchandise itself, music is a means of delineating retail territory, a way of projecting imaginary shoppers on to the aesthetically configured space of the shop floor.

Case study: music on an English high street

From January to September 1998, Sophie Belcher and I conducted participant observation and interviews in and around the high street shops in a small city in England. The study considered a total of eleven shops – eight national or international ‘chain’ shops and three ‘independents’. In the discussion that follows (and in accordance with the wishes of outlet managers) these shops are referred to by pseudonyms.

Canyon: Global chain with U.S. headquarters, specializing in casual wear and cotton goods for men, women and children (T-shirts, shorts, jeans, jackets, small selection of casual skirts and dresses).

Mistral: U.K. company, branches throughout United Kingdom and Europe; clothes for women and children. Dresses, skirts, jackets and trousers in natural materials (silk, linen, cotton, wool), rich colours and floral prints – exotic or ethnic in style.

Elysium: U.K. chain, trendy clothes aimed at a uent young women. Hip-hugger trousers, coats with feather collars, luminous and neon-coloured dresses, shrink-fit T-shirts and sweaters, club wear.

Axiom: U.K. chain, suits, dresses, career clothes in synthetic fabrics, evening wear, shoes. Separate ‘Petites’ section and men’s section.

Linea: U.K. chain, suits, dresses, career clothes, jeans, underwear, bathing suits; men’s, children’s and furniture sections. Large mail-order department.

136Music as a device of social ordering

Meadow River: Global chain. Floral pattern dresses, skirts, straw hats, some tailored items, furnishings and home décor.

Babe: U.K. chain. Trendy mini-dresses, basque tops, hip-hugger trousers, crochet tops, lower price range.

Directions: U.K. chain. Lower-priced sports wear for young women. Trendy.

Persuasion: Independently owned shop for women. Club wear, quasi-designer labels. ‘Funky’ type clothing.

Euphoria: Independently owned, trendy menswear, mainly for men in their twenties. Disco clothes; street wear.

Naked: Regional chain selling clubby trainers, platforms, sandals, boots, Doc Martens for men and women.

At the most basic, musical materials serve as ‘welcome mats’ and ‘keep out’ notices, depending upon how they are received. Some shops, such as Mistral, may be more lenient about disciplining retail space with musical devices (‘The music is a bit of everything for the clientele because they are not one specific age group’ (interview with manager)), yet at the same time attempt to construct themselves as a ‘style-conscious’ store with music in the foreground. Others use music merely to present a bland but recognizable retail identity, such as Canyon, where the music is barely audible and where a policy of playing music in changing rooms was cancelled because, according to the branch manger, ‘Clients found it invasive.’ Still other shops use a narrower range of overtly prominent music to fine tune their image, broadcast their market niche and heighten their exclusivity. At Babe, for example, music is used to ‘encapsulate the corporate identity of young, modern, female and let the customers know that they are in tune with what’s going on in the music industry’ (interview with manager).

At the locally based independent shops, music’s role as a way of specifying store identity – and hence target consumers – is more overt. In these stores, catering to particular market niches and to local clientele in a highly personal manner, the managers expounded upon the importance of sound to the retail environment. For example, Janice, owner and manager of Persuasion, told us, ‘Music is essential to the shop image. It creates an environment. When you have come from the hustle . . . it marks a distinct space.’ She described the commercial music that plays in most shops as boring, counterposing her own music as, ‘more alternative, like my shop . . .’. But she was not in favour of high volume levels for her small shop space. She told us how she aims for subtlety: ‘You want it to be mellow, have rhythm . . . not be obtrusive . . .’. The manager of Euphoria, whose target clientele are ‘predominantly lads’, told us, ‘You have to know what will work, and at Euphoria you don’t want anything too

“soulful” – certainly no classical, but not even jazz’ (the shop sticks to drum-and-bass and club numbers). At Naked, the manager described how music ‘gives the store an image’. For the young, club-oriented clientele, ‘cheesy pop tunes, jazz and classical would be a no-no’. (The shop plays a steady diet of drum-and-bass.)

How and where are store music policies made?

According to the type of store, we found that shop workers had di erent degrees of autonomy in developing music policy. At the large national and international chain stores, local or branch variation was minimized, in favour of homogeneity. The manager of Canyon told us that they had the idea that in any branch within the same time zone, one should be able to hear the same music at the same instant. Canyon’s head o ce in the United States chooses the music for the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. Supplied by the Muzak corporation, it is changed roughly every two months. The cassette decks are designed to play tapes on autoreverse, so that store employees cannot play tapes of their own choosing, and company music policy is thus technologically enforced. The sta , we were told by the manager, get bored hearing the same tape over extended periods of time and ‘can’t wait for a new tape to arrive’. As one sta member put it, ‘I hardly ever listen to it. Somehow I switch o , sometimes there are parts that obviously are much more pleasing so you can notice that, but very often I, I suppose when you work in there you have to switch o somehow [i.e., ignore the music].’ At Babe, tapes come down from head o ce every two weeks, two at a time. They have four tapes per deck and every two weeks half of these are changed. At Linea they get a tape each month from head o ce. At Mistral, tapes come from head o ce, two per month, but they also keep a backlog of old tapes that they feel they can use since they are not oriented to current chart numbers.

Other stores encourage a form of partial autonomy, in collaboration with record shops from whom CDs are borrowed or purchased. For example, Directions receives a memo every month from its regional head o ce listing a range of music options. The manager then chooses from this list and borrows tapes from MVC. They usually borrow two a week, one that is ‘quite funky/clubby’ and one that is ‘more mellow’.

While Directions has to work within management-specified parameters, at Naked and Elysium sta enjoy greater autonomy, purchasing, at their own discretion, music from HMV. Both have a monthly budget for music and the manager decides what should be played, though all sta can make suggestions about what should be purchased and played. This, the manager told us, is because the sta are culturally very like the shop’s

138 Music as a device of social ordering

target consumers, they function like ‘lead-users’ for the product lines. Finally, at the local independent shops, sta have the greatest degree of autonomy; they do not need to work within budgetary or policy constraints. At Euphoria, for example, sta decide what will be played, though when the boss is in, he does the choosing. Sta also bring in music from home. At Euphoria, the manager told us that he chooses music on the basis of what he knows of his customers, that you get to know them and know what they like. At Persuasion, Janice chooses music on the basis of what is going on in the club scene (her partner is a local DJ). She chooses it and changes it every two weeks.

These local and quasi-local music marketing practices are characteristic of newer and more flexible patterns of employment. They also reduce costs by drawing upon skills that are allowed to go unrecognized. Instead of supporting an entire marketing department for music production and policy, retailers can delegate the responsibilities to local sta . These sta , because they are chosen in part for their similarity to target consumers, perform the tasks otherwise allocated to a brand manager, simply by drawing upon their own tastes and preferences in choosing instore music. They are, in e ect, prototypical target customers. They also, occasionally, spend their own money on music for the shop. Similarly at HMV and MVC, the local record shops where clothing retailers go to buy or borrow their music, the ‘advisory service’ that record shop sta provide is unacknowledged (and not remunerated). For example, Dave, from HMV, told us how he tries to be ‘reactive not proactive’ when giving advice about what music might work in a retail space, and Peter, at MVC, said he wishes he could o er more advice because, in his opinion, many of the shops get their music wrong.

Creating scene, creating agency – music as ambience

In all the stores we studied, music was employed as a resource for creating and heightening scenic specificity, for imparting a sense of occasion and, therefore, for placing modes of agency on o er. For retailers, these a ective dimensions of agency are critical because ‘point-of-purchase’ or ‘impulse’ sales are typically transactions that involve consumers’ emotions, for example, ‘purchasing in response to moods’ (Piron 1990; 1993; Rook 1987; Rook and Hoch 1985). For this reason, retailers are concerned, as noted above, to structure the aesthetic environment and, through this, the emotional conduct of consumers. This structuring of agency – in particular, emotional agency – applies to shop sta as well as shoppers. Indeed, in the marketing literature, concern with manipulating the moods of employees is common. With regard to sta , the idea is that

music helps them to do ‘emotional work’ (Hochschild 1983), enter into a mode of agency conducive to the emotional features of their job – that is, acting like a lead-user (of shop goods) and generally fitting in, in terms of appearance and temperament, with the shop’s ambience. With regard to shoppers, the idea is that music helps to enrol them into an appropriate, or institutionally sponsored, mode of agency, that is, a mode of agency that is oriented to purchase behaviour. Certainly during the ethnographic phase of our research we noted numerous examples of sta behaving as if they were co-shoppers, ‘confessing’ to consumers their own shopping di culties and dilemmas in a cosy, gossipy manner (‘I’m tempted to spend all my salary on clothes here,’ for example (overheard in the changing room of Mistral)).

Each shop is engaged in structuring agency through its attempts to create a sense of occasion and a type of scenic specificity. The use of musical means for these purposes is perhaps most visible through music’s use in helping to instil temporal specificity to the in-store environment. All the stores we studied, even those with globally organized music policies, such as Canyon, tailored their music to fit temporal trends, and to construct and reinforce temporal realities, whether daily, weekly or seasonal. These constructions were aimed at both sta and shoppers. For example, morning in all the stores is when as one manager put it, ‘laidback’ music is played, typically at lower volume levels. In Euphoria, relaxing music is standard for morning. In Naked, Rick described how a typical day begins with ‘quite a slow tempo in the morning which rises throughout the day and begins to slow again near the end of the day. That’s for sta as well . . .’ At Directions the manager described how more ‘clubby, up-tempo’ music is used at lunchtime and ‘always on Saturday’ (their busiest day). In fact, all the stores provide louder, more up-beat music for Saturdays – the time when shoppers are oriented to ‘The Weekend’ and going out. Even at Canyon, where the music is changed roughly every two months, di erent tapes are used on Saturday: ‘more up-tempo music when . . . people [young women] are shopping for outfits for that evening’ (quote from interview with manager). At Mistral they begin the day with ‘more ambient’ tunes, ‘more gentle, as loud music would be o -putting’. As the day wears on, from around 11.30 to 12.30, music ‘gets more soulful’, with cuts from the Brand New Heavies and Ella Fitzgerald, for example. And at Elysium, the music for Saturdays is, as the manager puts it, ‘brighter, funkier’ though not strictly more uptempo. This is because, as it was explained to us, there are more young people on a Saturday and the music helps to get everyone in high spirits.

Some of the stores also use music to mark seasonal changes and events. For example, Babe used the soundtrack to the 1997 Romeo and Juliet for

140 Music as a device of social ordering

their Valentine’s Day promotions, and in December Linea and Canyon used Christmas music. Directions, on the other hand, whose choice of music from the local MVC is made from within regional o ce stipulated parameters, were given a Christmas option but rejected it because, ‘shoppers were sick of Christmas music . . . to entice them [to] stay we played club and party music, so [it was] seasonal without being Christmassy’ (interview with manager). Elysium, by contrast, did use Christmas music and made a point of using special, more ‘light-hearted, up-tempo’ music during the summer. At the time of Princess Diana’s death, Elysium played music that the manager felt, ‘matched the mood of the nation’, including Diana Ross tapes. (At the time of Diana’s funeral, Mistral frequently played the reworked version of ‘Candle in the wind’.)

That music is a resource for the temporal construction of occasion is reflected in company music policies, most clearly visible perhaps when those policies are articulated and broadcast downwards in terms of options to local branches where a degree of autonomy is available. For example, at Directions, the instructions sent down from regional headquarters describe how di erent options are linked to di erent musical ‘e ects’. The 3 December memo reads:

Chosen tapes for December:

(1) ‘The No. 1 Xmas Album’

I’m afraid there’s no escaping Bing Crosby’s White Xmas, but this tape is a new release and includes more recent Xmas hits. This tape will be particularly e ective on Sundays & late nights.

(2) ‘Best Party in the World Ever’

This tape is excellent and includes new mixes of old and new hits. Customers have reacted very well to this. Suitable for every day . . .

It goes on to suggest the following as ‘other suitable tapes if you borrow or buy as an individual, which can be played’ and describes both when the music will be most e ective and also the type of mood it will foster:

(1)‘Best Club Anthems (2) Ever’ – Clubby, released last week.

(2)‘Funky Divas’ – Very girl power, released today. Varied and upbeat.

(3)‘Wham! The Best Of’ – making a huge impact and is predicted to be top 3 for Xmas. Suitable for during the week.

Music is a flexible but powerful interpretative resource

Compared to the other aesthetic materials in-store, music is easily controlled. With the flick of a switch, it can be added, removed, adjusted, altered. Not surprisingly, therefore, music is one of the most frequently altered aspects of in-store environments and, because of its flexibility, it is

142 Music as a device of social ordering

be considered. Customers may even have felt pressure to conform to the setting implied by the music by purchasing expensive wine. A second possibility is that the background music communicated to shoppers the price and quality of the merchandise in the store . . . a high prestige, high price image . . .

(1993:338)

Following from this work, Adrian North and David Hargreaves have suggested that music can be used to structure product choice (1997b). Using an Asda wine department, they arranged a display featuring two wines, one German, one French, both at the same – relatively inexpensive

– price. When background music featured French accordion music, French wines sales rose significantly over German, and when German ‘Bierkeller’ music was played, the opposite occurred, leading the authors to conclude that music is a referent to which consumers may turn to clarify choice (albeit unconsciously – few admitted, when questioned upon exiting the area, to having ‘noticed’ the music). Product choice, in other words, is ‘fitted’ to the aesthetic atmosphere in-store, that is to what MacInnis and Park (1991:162) have described as, ‘consumers’ subjective perceptions of the music’s relevance or appropriateness’.

These studies are exciting from the sociological perspective because they emphasize the importance of ‘the symbolic meaning underlying each purchase experience’ (Areni and Kim 1993:338). They emphasize shopping as a form of social action, meaningfully oriented in its course and characterized by a range of interpretive activity. (Incidentally, they show, too, how carefully constructed, reflexively administered experimental methods – long snubbed by cultural sociologists – can be used with benefit by sociologists.) This environmental psychological work also underlines consumption as aesthetic activity and illuminates the importance, particularly in relation to browsing activity, of the local aesthetic environment as a ground against which purchase behaviour is configured; as discussed above, the point-of-purchase sale is increasingly significant within the retail trade. And the rise of point-of-purchase activity in turn points to the increasing tendency of consumers to visit shops as if they were galleries whose displays are also repositories of identity, modes of aesthetic being. Consumers may enter shops, in other words, simply to ‘try on’ ideas, goods, as opportunities arise. Given this characteristic form of consumer uncertainty – one goes to a shop to see what the experience will bring, rather as one might go to a park, film or gallery – the salience of in-store aesthetics is heightened. The shop thus provides an ideal case in point for the study of organizational aesthetics. Consumers may also orient to in-store aesthetics as a routine part of their e orts to place or recognize a shop’s style and the possibilities for agency that it o ers or implies.