Posted on 12/13/2012 10:03:55 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Christmas music makes us spend more
Endless loops of songs like "All I Want For Christmas" in shops during the festive season don't just drive us mad - they also make us more careless with our money, academics have warned.
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
4:32PM GMT 13 Dec 2012
While repeated renditions of "Jingle Bells" may seem like an innocent attempt to raise customers' spirits during the nightmare of Christmas shopping, the songs also have a more subtle impact.
Background music, or "Muzak", can be used by marketers to impose cultures - such as the commercialisation of Christmas - onto consumers and influence their behaviour, experts said.
Dr Alan Bradshaw of Royal Holloway, University of London, said: “Festive jingles are force-fed to Christmas shoppers in a bid to change their mood, influence their sense of time and what sort of products they buy. In other words, this is an attempt to manipulate your shopping habits in a way that you might barely be aware of.
“Often we are told that we have the freedom to choose where we want to shop, but during Christmas the use of music in this way is so ubiquitous that our freedom to choose disappears.”
Dr Bradshaw and Prof Morris B Holbrook of Columbia University examined the phenomenon and found that retailers often "dumb down" the music played in shops to relax customers, meaning it is easier to control their behaviour.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Johnny Marks was a brilliant composer. He wrote most of those songs and they have become christmas traditions.
Reformed: Still keeping the 52 Christian Holy Days a year.
They have to play “Oh holy night” for me to spend my money. Over and over again for the libertarians and their hell mates, the liberals.
I was wondering why Best Buy was playing "All I want for Christmas is a new TV". I guess that explains it.
Now if I can just get over my urges to buy my nephews hippopotamuses for Christmas.
No it’s grand children and great grand children.
The music keeps me outa stores!
Caroling kids, caroling kids
A trifle premature, in tones so rich and pure and crystaline
Call for the day, the popular day
It’s fast approaching now
But will the mood allow
One dissent
If this were the Seine
We’d be very suave
But it’s just the rain
Washing down the boulevard
Thank God it’s not Christmas
When there is only you
And nothing else to do
Thank God it’s not Christmas
Where there’s just you to do
The rest is closed to public view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UbkDzp5LuY
indeed.
“Let’s see how crass we can be for a religious holiday.”
I’ve walked out of a local Dunhamns Sporting Goods store twice this year without a purchase, precisely because of the gawdawful screeching they consider Christmas Music.
Hard to imagine anything worse than Bruce Springsteens renditionb of “Santa Clause is Comin to Town”, but they’ve found a bunch
If I had to spend more than 30 minutes with that crap, I’d probably be grabbing one of their AR15s to take out the speakers
Ain't that the truth? That man can hardly carry a tune. Awful "singing" beyond belief.
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