The Supermarket Sound: Why Grocery Retail Is Ignoring Its Biggest Brand Opportunity

The sound that belongs to no one

Walk into any supermarket in Latin America. Listen. In most cases, what's coming through the speakers is not a brand decision — it's a file downloaded from a stock library, interchangeable with whatever is playing at the competitor across the street.

That's not an assumption. It's the finding of one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted on sonic identity in the sector: amp, a global sonic branding agency within the WPP group, analyzed the audio strategies of 100 grocery brands worldwide. Its conclusion is unambiguous.

Nearly two-thirds of all grocery store content globally — 63% — uses generic stock music. Not original music, not a sonic identity built with intention: music that anyone can use, that says nothing specific about who you are or why a customer should choose you.

In a sector where physical differentiation is increasingly difficult — products are similar, prices are comparable, aisles look the same — sound should be a competitive advantage. For most supermarkets, it's a field they haven't even entered.

What science has been telling grocery retail for decades

The evidence on music and shopper behavior is neither new nor speculative. Decades of results have been pointing in the same direction.

A landmark 1982 study by Ronald Milliman examined the effect of tempo in a supermarket: when slow music was played, customers moved more slowly, spent more time in the store, and sales volume increased by nearly 38% compared to days when fast music was played.

But music doesn't only regulate pace. It also shapes concrete decisions. A study by the University of Leicester in a UK supermarket found that when Bierkeller music played next to a wine display, German wines outsold French ones. When French accordion music played, the opposite occurred. Shoppers had no idea the music had influenced them.

And more recently, a 2023 study by the University of Bath found that when music was played in a Swedish supermarket chain in Stockholm, it increased basket size by more than 10%.

Most customers associate music with comfort, relaxation, and engagement, while silence is perceived as emotionally flat and uncomfortable. Pleasant music that is congruent with the space is linked to slower movement, longer shopping time, and a greater tendency to make unplanned purchases.

The effect is real. The question is why so few chains leverage it with any brand intention.

The problem isn't the absence of music — it's the absence of identity

Playing music in a supermarket is easy. Building a sonic identity is another matter entirely.

Strategic sonic ambiance involves a music policy system — anchored in tempo, instrumentation, and schedule consistency — so that every location, on every shift, sounds like the same brand, rather than like whatever playlist the cashier on duty felt like playing.

That leap — from background music to sonic signature — is what separates retailers with real presence from those that sound like everyone else. And research shows that 44% of consumers perceive music that doesn't match the brand as a signal that "the brand is out of touch," while one in four will actively downgrade their perception of that business's professionalism.

The critical point: younger consumers are especially sensitive. Up to 75% of Generation Z and 60% of Millennials can identify generic stock music, and they frequently associate it with "cheap" or "low-budget" brands. For retailers seeking to appeal to these segments, music becomes part of the product — not just the backdrop.

The Kroger case: when a supermarket decides to sound like itself

The most documented case of a grocery retailer taking its sonic identity seriously is Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States. Its work with Made Music Studio illustrates exactly what it means to move from generic stock to an intentional sonic signature.

Kroger partnered with the global sonic branding agency Made Music Studio to develop a sonic identity that captured the ethos of "Fresh for Everyone" — its brand platform — with the same consistency and distinction as its refreshed visual identity, adding a recognizable, proprietary layer to its brand system.

The result was "Doin' It Fresh": a sonic identity described as "a warm, encouraging, and playful memory trigger for the joy of grocery shopping," whose composition included a melody featuring a jazz-inspired "blue note" referencing the blue color of the Kroger logo.

The music was deployed across all of Kroger's channels: advertising (TV, digital, and social media), in-store environments, on-hold music, events and sponsorships, and internal communications. A single sonic system traveling across every brand touchpoint.

The amp study ranks Kroger 6th in the world in sonic performance among grocery retailers. It is the only American supermarket in the global top 10. Stop & Shop ranked 24th, Target 38th, Publix 47th, and H-E-B 50th. The gap between the top performer and the rest of the North American market is enormous.

The ranking that challenges assumptions: premium vs. discount

One of the most counterintuitive findings in the amp study concerns who invests more in sonic identity: it's not the premium chains. It's the discount ones.

Discount supermarkets globally are taking a more consistent approach to sonic branding than their premium counterparts. They use original music in approximately 4.5% of their content, compared to 1% for premium retailers. Nearly three times as many discount brands have a sonic logo, and those logos appear in 12% of their content versus 3% for premium brands.

The sonic logos of discount brands are on average 15 years old, versus 4.5 years for those of premium brands. Temporal consistency is itself part of the strategy: a sonic identity that has been built over decades is far harder to replicate than a visual one.

It's a finding that resonates with what marketers routinely discover about brand building: distinctiveness is often less a matter of sophistication than of repetition.

The stock trap: when everyone sounds the same

Why does the problem persist? Partly because stock music is invisible as a problem until someone points it out to you.

Every one of the 10 brands in amp's global top ranking has a sonic logo, and nine use original music. The message is clear: the brands that perform best in audio don't simply use sound. They own it.

Research also shows that creating a sonic identity is not enough if brands don't deploy it consistently. Sustained use across advertising, digital platforms, and other customer interactions is what helps establish an audio identity that consumers associate with a specific retailer.

Put another way: sonic branding doesn't work like a product launch. It works like the accumulation of layers that, over time, build recognition and trust. A single song does not make a brand. A coherent sound policy, deployed at every touchpoint over years, does.

For a supermarket — a space where customers come in week after week, where sensory stimuli accumulate visit by visit — that logic applies with particular force. Every trip to the store is an opportunity to reinforce who you are. Or to sound exactly like the competition.

The supermarket of the future is already thinking about its sonic signature

Grocery retail faces a pressure that isn't going away: grocery e-commerce is growing, home delivery is becoming the norm, and the reason to physically go shopping needs more and more justification. Supermarkets face the challenge of making physical retail appealing in the face of the convenience offered by online shopping and delivery services.

In that context, the sensory experience of the physical space becomes an argument for the visit. And sound — an asset that must be recognizable across stores, apps, social platforms, creator content, and AI-enabled experiences — is one of the few that can travel across all of those spaces.

The retailers that understand this first will have an advantage their competitors won't be able to replicate quickly. Not because music is expensive or technologically complex, but because sonic identity is built over time. It requires editorial decision-making, consistency, and curation — exactly the kind of work that services like Mystify Radio carry out for brands that understand sound is not decoration, but strategy.

The supermarket of the future won't just have better prices or a faster app. It will sound like something. And that sound, repeated week after week in the shopper's mind, will eventually become as recognizable as its logo.