How the Neuroscience of Music Shapes the Customer Experience
With its power to influence emotion, memory, and even behaviour, it’s no secret that music has a deeply profound impact on the human brain. More than just background noise, music is the secret weapon hospitality venues deploy to enhance the customer dining experience, boost mood, evoke nostalgia, complement the flavours of food and drink, and more.
Whether they realise it or not, hospitality venues are utilising music’s mind-altering powers to build a deeper connection with customers - an effect which is firmly rooted in neuroscience.
Where we record experiences and where we experience music occupies the same part of the brain
Music hijacks the brain’s ability to process memory to drive diner behaviour from menu choices to the time they spend eating and drinking. Located in the temporal lobe of the brain, the amygdala is the area responsible for evaluating experiences as either positive or negative, repeatable or non-repeatable. This also happens to be the part of the brain that is activated when we listen to music.
As one of the most heavily studied topics in psychology, the link between music and emotion has been extensively documented through decades of brain research to build understanding of the mechanisms behind music’s awesome influence.
