February 14, 2023 • 12 mins
There are many steps in the consumer's brand journey but none more important than the last one; purchase. Let's discuss how payment sounds could be retail's weakest link.
This episode was a reboot from a previous article I wrote in 2022; POS Sounds Proven to Be a Brands' Weakest Link.
Thank you to Sentient Decision Science for their Pay Sounds study and the inspiration for this episode. Thank you also to Made Music for the sonic logo and functional sounds that they contributed to the study.
The SFX were collected from Pixabay Sound Effects and the musical selects (other than the theme song) were from some amazing musicians on Artlist.io.
---
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The Sound In Marketing Podcast is produced by Dreamr Productions and hosted, written, and edited by Jeanna Isham. It is available on all the major podcast channels here https://pod.link/1467112373.
Let’s make this world of sound more intriguing, more unique, and more on brand.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Welcome to the Sound In Marketing podcast.
I'm your host,Jeanna Isham, owner and founder
of Dreamr Productionsand Sound in Marketing learning.
I create, consult and educate individuals
and brands on the power of soundin marketing.
Sonic branding and sound strategyis such a widely misunderstood concept.
I wanted to spend this seasonexploring how vast and nuanced it can be,
(00:28):
but alsohow easily it can be built into branding.
A lot of these episodes are focusing onsonic branding research
that I've done through the years,and rebooting past articles
I've written into podcast form.For the original inspirations,
check the show notes of each episode.
If the content in these episodesinspire ideas for your company.
(00:49):
Don't hesitate to give me a call.
We help brands to make sound on purpose.
Now on to the show.
In this episode,we'll be focusing on a very important
aspect of the purchase process,point of sale,
and what it does or does not sound like.
The datafrom this episode came from a formal study
(01:09):
put together by Sentient Decision Science.
What if I told you that over75% of consumers have a negative
emotional reaction to the experienceof paying for their purchases?
According to Sentient Decision Sciencesresearch study pay sounds, it's true.
Of the billions of purchases that happenevery day all around the world.
(01:33):
Three out of four buyerswalk away from the register,
feeling some form of emotional distress.
That was Joe
Sauer, former SVP and managing directorof Sentient Decision Science.
Sentient is a data science companybased in New Hampshire.
They came across this statisticduring their larger
(01:53):
study over the emotions of shopping.
What they discovered was that althoughthe shopping experience as a whole
was positive once the actual purchasecame into play, something else happened.
The experienceof actually paying for things includes
subconscious questionslike am I paying too much for this?
(02:14):
Can I afford it?
Is this payment secure?
Our initial responses to purchases vary,but ultimately
we share an aversionto handing over our money.
Although there are many stepsin a customer's journey
with a brand, our memory is heavilytied to just two of them.
We remember the most exciting stepof the journey and the very last step.
(02:38):
This is called the Peak End Rule.
Our memory of an experienceis largely dependent on two things.
What we're feeling at the extremeor peak moment of the experience,
and what we were feelingwhen the experience ended.
Our memories typically aren't an averageor even influenced
necessarily by the amount of timewe were engaged in the experience.
(03:02):
And it explains why
we can actually be pretty irrationalin our recollection of events.
It also suggests that our memoriesconsist of a series of highlights,
rather than a full and unimpeachablerecord of facts and events.
The end
point of the shopping processis pretty clearly payment.
Bearing in mindthat this part of the process
(03:24):
is an emotionally distressingone for the vast majority of consumers.
It becomes pretty clearthat we haven't applied the lessons
of the PeakEnd Rule to the shopping process.
As Joe goes on to explain.
We invest heavily in the design
of our brick and mortar stores,which focus on the ideal peak experience.
However, it fallsshort in addressing the end experience.
(03:47):
Likewise, in the digital and voice userexperience scenario,
focus is on the design of the UIand UX of applications,
but then they typically relyon a payment plugin or a third party
API to handle the actual customerpayment process.
We continue to largelyignore the payment experience itself.
(04:07):
The paymentexperience is retail's weakest link.
You are the weakest link.
Goodbye
By breaking the connection of the paymentjourney, app
outsourcing part of it to a third partycompanies
are in danger of appearing insincerewith their consumer.
It breaks up the uniformity that createsbrand persona and brand identity,
(04:30):
which affects the natural cognitive bias.
There are two terms I learned throughmy research of this study
that are highly importantto be aware of cognitive and recency bias.
Cognitivebias is the bias that your mind holds
onto thatyour conscious self is not aware of.
Recency bias, in particular,is the process of forming new memories
(04:53):
that makes it harderfor us to recall older ones.
What we last experienced will alwaysremain more vivid than the rest.
Whether we like it or not,this is a bias our subconscious
automatically plays on us.
And this is why the paymentprocess is so very crucial.
When wechoose to focus on the customer experience
(05:14):
as a whole and not on specific touchpointslike the purchase point.
Brain representation is in dangerof 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 allpoints of our branding and marketing.
When we choose generic and out of the boxto represent our brand,
(05:37):
that is what the consumer will rememberor not remember.
Brand trust and sincerity
is formed through a cohesive experience.
This is accomplished through UNdisrupted sensorial journeys.
A brand assures customers
that their payment has gone throughand is secure through visual prompts.
(05:57):
In most all purchase pointsthat have a visual UI or user interface.
However, when dealing with thingslike a touch screen
that doesn't have any physicalsensorial prompts, how is the customer
to be sure that they did in factpush the three button?
Even with sensorial prompts,what if the panel is sticky?
(06:18):
Or you're just not fully surethat your process was completed?
Sound promptsare that extra and final touch
that assure the customerthat everything was fully processed
and the transactionhas been completed in its intended way.
Sound is the
(06:38):
end rule that all brandsneed to become more mindful
of. With customsounds for your point of sale step.
you’ve automatically gone a step furtherinto identifying a stronger brand persona.
This is where sonic brandingand sound strategy come into play.
As a sonic brander,I assumed that the point of sale POS
sound should mirror the brand'sSonic logo.
(07:01):
However, according to Sentient’s PaySounds findings
not necessarily
Sentient did a number of different tests.
The first was between visually and nonvisually branded payment experiences.
The second test was incorporatinga sonic element to the payment experience.
What they foundwas that generally sound added
(07:22):
a positive emotional response,
knowing that sound and music can infuseexperiences with meaning and emotion.
Our second hypothesis was that layering,well designed purpose built
sounds into the payment experiencewould introduce enough positivity
to at least offsetits inherent negativity.
Sound has undeniable emotional clout.
(07:45):
Sound is really largely untapped
or under leveraged elementof a brand's identity.
In an era where most CEOs and CMOsare struggling to establish,
much less sustain, meaningful and relevantconnections to their customers,
no company can afford to ignore the impactthat well-designed
and thoughtfully integrated sound can haveon how their brands are perceived.
(08:08):
Starting with somethingas simple as the payment experience,
what
surprised me, was that the soundsthat added the highest positive response
were not the sounds associatedwith existed.
Branded sound
made Music a sonic branding agencyresponsible for works such as the AT&T
Sonic logo, were tasked with writinga functional payment sound for the brands.
(08:31):
In a study that did not already havean existing Sonic logo.
These functional sounds scoredhigher than those sounds
specifically associatedwith branded sound.
Why did this occurand why didn't the sonic logos work best?
I've been trying to make sense of thissince I heard the results,
and it's still unclear to me the answer.
(08:52):
All I have are theories.
One theory.
Although payment sounds shouldn'tjust be a generic afterthought,
they need to be their own entity,separate from branding.
They should evoke comfort and easethat the payment went through
and that the customershould feel good about their spend,
but not fully evokethe brand's identity in the process.
Does that mean that all POS soundsshould sound the same?
(09:16):
Should we just create a pleasantmnemonic tone and call it a day?
Or should there be a separatebrand identity for each store
and each brandthat only identifies for payment?
The Sonic branding landscapeis littered with brands that have slapped
the poorly designed or badly matchedSonic logo on top of their visual identity
and actually damaged their brand equityin the process.
(09:37):
A well-designed sonic logo emergesfrom a carefully planned sonic identity
system produced, tested and refinedby industry leading sound specialists.
Anotherthought is that perhaps the sonic branding
sounds used may not have beena broad enough representation.
Sonic branding is a form of growthmarketing, not performance marketing.
(10:00):
This means that soniccredibility takes time
and is an investment in long term ROI.
Perhaps the sonicbranding elements used from these brands
that were representedhadn't been mainstream long enough,
and maybe the payment soundsthat manmade came up with
were more sonically familiaror accessible to the test group.
(10:21):
So where do we go from here?
I don't see these new findingsas irrelevant by any means.
However, as they were found,someone accidentally,
I would consider these test resultsunsound and sonic branding inconclusive.
Further studies should be taken,and the purchase
sound arena in generalshould be more fully explored.
(10:41):
Testing should include both new
and decades old Sonicbranding to better AB test the results.
For example, Mastercard's Sonic
branding has only been in circulationsince 2019.
Its Sonic branding equity,can't be compared fairly to a company
like McDonald's, whose Sonic logohas been in circulation for 20 years.
(11:03):
Another factor in the AB testingwould be to have more than one
Sonic branding agency representedto create the sounds for the...
Soundless brands.
Agenciesall have their own flair and background.
That should be factors of consideration.
One thing is for sure, a lot more study
and researchneeds to go into this new discovery.
We have learnedthat care needs to be taken in the end
(11:25):
purchase stagethat is not currently being explored.
However,it may be more of a functional sound
explorationrather than a sonic branding one.
I for one, am
very excited to see what this means.
The end rule for purchasingneeds to be something on all of our minds.
That last step is your final contactwith your client customer, consumer.
(11:48):
It should matter.
The purchase process needs to be givenjust as much care
and attention as the first,
“Hello”, and “Welcome to my business.”
Perhaps even more so,
I'll leave you with final words from Joe.
Or actually Galileo.
Galileo said all truths are easyto understand once they are discovered.
(12:10):
The point is to discover them.
Thank you to Sentient Decision Sciencefor their Pay Sounds study
and the inspiration for this episode.
Thank you also to Made Musicfor the Sonic logo and functional sounds
that they contributed to the study.
The sound effects were collectedfrom Pixabay
and the music selects.
Other than the theme song, werefrom some amazing musicians on ArtList.io
(12:33):
ArtList.io
Did you hear anything
that sparked some interest in sound designor sonic branding for your business?
I offer both consultations and sonic
branding sound design through my company,Dreamr Productions.
Shoot me an email and let's chat.
All links will be providedin the show notes, let’s make this world
of sound more intriguing,more unique, and more and more on brand.
Welcome to the Sound In Marketing podcast.
I'm your host,Jeanna Isham, owner and founder
of Dreamr Productionsand Sound in Marketing learning.
I create, consult and educate individuals
and brands on the power of soundin marketing.
Sonic branding and sound strategyis such a widely misunderstood concept.
I wanted to spend this seasonexploring how vast and nuanced it can be,
(00:28):
but alsohow easily it can be built into branding.
A lot of these episodes are focusing onsonic branding research
that I've done through the years,and rebooting past articles
I've written into podcast form.For the original inspirations,
check the show notes of each episode.
If the content in these episodesinspire ideas for your company.
(00:49):
Don't hesitate to give me a call.
We help brands to make sound on purpose.
Now on to the show.
In this episode,we'll be focusing on a very important
aspect of the purchase process,point of sale,
and what it does or does not sound like.
The datafrom this episode came from a formal study
(01:09):
put together by Sentient Decision Science.
What if I told you that over75% of consumers have a negative
emotional reaction to the experienceof paying for their purchases?
According to Sentient Decision Sciencesresearch study pay sounds, it's true.
Of the billions of purchases that happenevery day all around the world.
(01:33):
Three out of four buyerswalk away from the register,
feeling some form of emotional distress.
That was Joe
Sauer, former SVP and managing directorof Sentient Decision Science.
Sentient is a data science companybased in New Hampshire.
They came across this statisticduring their larger
(01:53):
study over the emotions of shopping.
What they discovered was that althoughthe shopping experience as a whole
was positive once the actual purchasecame into play, something else happened.
The experienceof actually paying for things includes
subconscious questionslike am I paying too much for this?
(02:14):
Can I afford it?
Is this payment secure?
Our initial responses to purchases vary,but ultimately
we share an aversionto handing over our money.
Although there are many stepsin a customer's journey
with a brand, our memory is heavilytied to just two of them.
We remember the most exciting stepof the journey and the very last step.
(02:38):
This is called the Peak End Rule.
Our memory of an experienceis largely dependent on two things.
What we're feeling at the extremeor peak moment of the experience,
and what we were feelingwhen the experience ended.
Our memories typically aren't an averageor even influenced
necessarily by the amount of timewe were engaged in the experience.
(03:02):
And it explains why
we can actually be pretty irrationalin our recollection of events.
It also suggests that our memoriesconsist of a series of highlights,
rather than a full and unimpeachablerecord of facts and events.
The end
point of the shopping processis pretty clearly payment.
Bearing in mindthat this part of the process
(03:24):
is an emotionally distressingone for the vast majority of consumers.
It becomes pretty clearthat we haven't applied the lessons
of the PeakEnd Rule to the shopping process.
As Joe goes on to explain.
We invest heavily in the design
of our brick and mortar stores,which focus on the ideal peak experience.
However, it fallsshort in addressing the end experience.
(03:47):
Likewise, in the digital and voice userexperience scenario,
focus is on the design of the UIand UX of applications,
but then they typically relyon a payment plugin or a third party
API to handle the actual customerpayment process.
We continue to largelyignore the payment experience itself.
(04:07):
The paymentexperience is retail's weakest link.
You are the weakest link.
Goodbye
By breaking the connection of the paymentjourney, app
outsourcing part of it to a third partycompanies
are in danger of appearing insincerewith their consumer.
It breaks up the uniformity that createsbrand persona and brand identity,
(04:30):
which affects the natural cognitive bias.
There are two terms I learned throughmy research of this study
that are highly importantto be aware of cognitive and recency bias.
Cognitivebias is the bias that your mind holds
onto thatyour conscious self is not aware of.
Recency bias, in particular,is the process of forming new memories
(04:53):
that makes it harderfor us to recall older ones.
What we last experienced will alwaysremain more vivid than the rest.
Whether we like it or not,this is a bias our subconscious
automatically plays on us.
And this is why the paymentprocess is so very crucial.
When wechoose to focus on the customer experience
(05:14):
as a whole and not on specific touchpointslike the purchase point.
Brain representation is in dangerof 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 allpoints of our branding and marketing.
When we choose generic and out of the boxto represent our brand,
(05:37):
that is what the consumer will rememberor not remember.
Brand trust and sincerity
is formed through a cohesive experience.
This is accomplished through UNdisrupted sensorial journeys.
A brand assures customers
that their payment has gone throughand is secure through visual prompts.
(05:57):
In most all purchase pointsthat have a visual UI or user interface.
However, when dealing with thingslike a touch screen
that doesn't have any physicalsensorial prompts, how is the customer
to be sure that they did in factpush the three button?
Even with sensorial prompts,what if the panel is sticky?
(06:18):
Or you're just not fully surethat your process was completed?
Sound promptsare that extra and final touch
that assure the customerthat everything was fully processed
and the transactionhas been completed in its intended way.
Sound is the
(06:38):
end rule that all brandsneed to become more mindful
of. With customsounds for your point of sale step.
you’ve automatically gone a step furtherinto identifying a stronger brand persona.
This is where sonic brandingand sound strategy come into play.
As a sonic brander,I assumed that the point of sale POS
sound should mirror the brand'sSonic logo.
(07:01):
However, according to Sentient’s PaySounds findings
not necessarily
Sentient did a number of different tests.
The first was between visually and nonvisually branded payment experiences.
The second test was incorporatinga sonic element to the payment experience.
What they foundwas that generally sound added
(07:22):
a positive emotional response,
knowing that sound and music can infuseexperiences with meaning and emotion.
Our second hypothesis was that layering,well designed purpose built
sounds into the payment experiencewould introduce enough positivity
to at least offsetits inherent negativity.
Sound has undeniable emotional clout.
(07:45):
Sound is really largely untapped
or under leveraged elementof a brand's identity.
In an era where most CEOs and CMOsare struggling to establish,
much less sustain, meaningful and relevantconnections to their customers,
no company can afford to ignore the impactthat well-designed
and thoughtfully integrated sound can haveon how their brands are perceived.
(08:08):
Starting with somethingas simple as the payment experience,
what
surprised me, was that the soundsthat added the highest positive response
were not the sounds associatedwith existed.
Branded sound
made Music a sonic branding agencyresponsible for works such as the AT&T
Sonic logo, were tasked with writinga functional payment sound for the brands.
(08:31):
In a study that did not already havean existing Sonic logo.
These functional sounds scoredhigher than those sounds
specifically associatedwith branded sound.
Why did this occurand why didn't the sonic logos work best?
I've been trying to make sense of thissince I heard the results,
and it's still unclear to me the answer.
(08:52):
All I have are theories.
One theory.
Although payment sounds shouldn'tjust be a generic afterthought,
they need to be their own entity,separate from branding.
They should evoke comfort and easethat the payment went through
and that the customershould feel good about their spend,
but not fully evokethe brand's identity in the process.
Does that mean that all POS soundsshould sound the same?
(09:16):
Should we just create a pleasantmnemonic tone and call it a day?
Or should there be a separatebrand identity for each store
and each brandthat only identifies for payment?
The Sonic branding landscapeis littered with brands that have slapped
the poorly designed or badly matchedSonic logo on top of their visual identity
and actually damaged their brand equityin the process.
(09:37):
A well-designed sonic logo emergesfrom a carefully planned sonic identity
system produced, tested and refinedby industry leading sound specialists.
Anotherthought is that perhaps the sonic branding
sounds used may not have beena broad enough representation.
Sonic branding is a form of growthmarketing, not performance marketing.
(10:00):
This means that soniccredibility takes time
and is an investment in long term ROI.
Perhaps the sonicbranding elements used from these brands
that were representedhadn't been mainstream long enough,
and maybe the payment soundsthat manmade came up with
were more sonically familiaror accessible to the test group.
(10:21):
So where do we go from here?
I don't see these new findingsas irrelevant by any means.
However, as they were found,someone accidentally,
I would consider these test resultsunsound and sonic branding inconclusive.
Further studies should be taken,and the purchase
sound arena in generalshould be more fully explored.
(10:41):
Testing should include both new
and decades old Sonicbranding to better AB test the results.
For example, Mastercard's Sonic
branding has only been in circulationsince 2019.
Its Sonic branding equity,can't be compared fairly to a company
like McDonald's, whose Sonic logohas been in circulation for 20 years.
(11:03):
Another factor in the AB testingwould be to have more than one
Sonic branding agency representedto create the sounds for the...
Soundless brands.
Agenciesall have their own flair and background.
That should be factors of consideration.
One thing is for sure, a lot more study
and researchneeds to go into this new discovery.
We have learnedthat care needs to be taken in the end
(11:25):
purchase stagethat is not currently being explored.
However,it may be more of a functional sound
explorationrather than a sonic branding one.
I for one, am
very excited to see what this means.
The end rule for purchasingneeds to be something on all of our minds.
That last step is your final contactwith your client customer, consumer.
(11:48):
It should matter.
The purchase process needs to be givenjust as much care
and attention as the first,
“Hello”, and “Welcome to my business.”
Perhaps even more so,
I'll leave you with final words from Joe.
Or actually Galileo.
Galileo said all truths are easyto understand once they are discovered.
(12:10):
The point is to discover them.
Thank you to Sentient Decision Sciencefor their Pay Sounds study
and the inspiration for this episode.
Thank you also to Made Musicfor the Sonic logo and functional sounds
that they contributed to the study.
The sound effects were collectedfrom Pixabay
and the music selects.
Other than the theme song, werefrom some amazing musicians on ArtList.io
(12:33):
ArtList.io
Did you hear anything
that sparked some interest in sound designor sonic branding for your business?
I offer both consultations and sonic
branding sound design through my company,Dreamr Productions.
Shoot me an email and let's chat.
All links will be providedin the show notes, let’s make this world
of sound more intriguing,more unique, and more and more on brand.
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