There are many steps in the consumer’s brand journey but none more important than the last one; purchase. Research has proven that there is more to be explored in the point of sale including the POS sound itself.
Emotion in Purchase
What if I told you that over 75% of consumers have a negative emotional reaction to the experience of paying for their purchases? According to Sentient Decision Science’s research study ‘Pay Sounds’ this is true.
Sentient Decision Science, a data science company based in New Hampshire, happened on this statistic during their larger study over “the emotions of shopping”. What they discovered was that although the shopping experience as a whole was positive, once the actual purchase came into play, something else happened.
As I’m sure we’re all familiar with, the experience of actually paying for things includes subconscious questions like “Am I paying too much for this?” “Can I afford it?” “Is this payment secure?”
Our initial responses to purchases vary. But ultimately we share an aversion to handing over our money.
Retail’s Weakest Link
Although there are many steps in a customer’s journey with a brand, our memory is heavily tied to just two of them. We remember the most exciting step of the journey and the very last step.
This is called the Peak-End Rule.
As Joe Sauer, Sentient’s SVP and Managing Director, explains, “we invest heavily in the design of our brick and mortar stores which focus on the ideal peak experience. However, it falls short in addressing the end experience.” Likewise, in the digital and voice user experiences, focus is on the design of the UI and UX of applications but then they typically rely on a “payment plug-in or 3rd party API to handle the customer payment process.”
We continue to largely ignore the payment experience itself. The payment experience is retail’s weakest link.
Joe Sauer
Insincerity Affects Cognitive Bias
Cognitive bias is the bias that your mind holds onto that your conscious self isn’t aware of. Recency bias, in particular, is the process of forming new memories that makes it harder for us to recall older ones.
The last experience will always remain more vivid than the rest.
When we choose to focus on the customer experience as a whole and not on specific touchpoints like the purchase point, brand representation is in danger of becoming insincere. Currently, this is happening in physical locations as well as both e-commerce and v-commerce.
We must be sincere and authentic in all points of our branding and marketing. When we choose generic and “out of the box” to represent our brand, that is what the consumer will remember (or not remember).
How Do Brands Create Trust and Sincerity?
Brand trust and sincerity is formed through a cohesive experience accomplished through undisrupted sensorial journeys.
A brand assures customers that their payment has gone through and is secure through visual prompts in most all purchase points that have a visual UI (user interface). However, when dealing with things like a touch screen that doesn’t have any physical sensorial prompts, how is the customer to be sure that they did in fact push the ‘3’ button? Even with sensorial prompts, what if the panel is sticky or you’re just not fully sure that your process was completed?
Sound prompts are that extra and final touch that assure the customer that everything was fully processed and that the transaction has been completed in its intended way.
Sound is the End Rule that all brands should be more mindful of.
POS Sounds
Custom sounds go a step further. This is where sonic branding and sound strategy come into play. As a sonic brander, I would assume that the point of sale (POS) sound should mirror the brands’ sonic logo. According to Sentient’s ‘Pay Sounds’ findings, not necessarily.
Sentient did a number of different tests. The first was between visually branded payment experiences and non visually branded payment experiences. The second test was incorporating a sonic element.
What they found was that generally sound added a positive emotional response. However, the sounds that added the highest positive response were not the sounds associated with existing branded sound.
Made Music, a sonic branding agency responsible for such work as the ATT sonic logo, were tasked with writing a functional payment sound for the brands in the study that did not already have an existing sonic logo. These functional sounds scored higher than those sounds specifically associated with branded sound.
My Thoughts On These Unusual Results
Why did this occur? And why didn’t the sonic logos work best?
I’ve been trying to make sense of this since I heard the results and it’s still unclear to me the answer. All I have are theories.
Although POS sounds shouldn’t just be a generic afterthought, they need to be their own entity separate from branding. POS sounds should evoke comfort and ease that the payment went through and that the customer should feel good about their spend but not fully evoke the brand’s identity in the process.
Does that mean that all POS sounds should sound the same? Should we just create a pleasant mnemonic tone and call it a day? Or should there be a separate brand identity for each store and each brand that only identifies for payment?
Another thought would be perhaps the sonic branding sounds used had not been a broad enough representation. Sonic branding is a form of growth marketing not performance marketing.
Sonic credibility takes time and is an investment in long term ROI.
Perhaps the sonic branding elements used by these brands hadn’t been mainstream long enough? And maybe the payment sounds that Man Made came up with were more sonically familiar or accessible to the test group.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I do not see these new findings as irrelevant by any means. However, as they were found somewhat accidentally, I would consider these test results of emotional response to POS sound inconclusive.
Further studies should be taken and POS sound should be more fully explored.
Testing should include both new and decades old sonic branding to better A/B test the results. For example, Mastercard’s sonic branding has only been in circulation for about 2 years. Its sonic branding equity can’t be compared fairly to a company like McDonalds who’s sonic logo has been in circulation for 20 years.
Another factor in the A/B testing would be to have more than one sonic branding agency represented to create sounds for the ‘soundless’ brands. Agencies all have their own flair and background that should be factors of consideration.
One thing is for sure, a lot more study and research needs to go into this new discovery. We have learned that care needs to be taken in the end purchase stage that is not currently being explored. However, it may be more of a functional sound exploration rather than a sonic branding one.
I for one am very excited to see what this means. The End Rule for purchasing needs to be something on all of our minds. That last step is your final contact with your client/customer/consumer. What will you do with it?
The purchase process needs to be given just as much care and attention as the first “hello and welcome to my business”.
Follow the link to download Sentient Decision Science’s White Paper Fixing Retail’s Weakest Link; Payment.
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The Difference Between Jingles and Sonic Logos
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