13. Soundtrack Your Brand’s Groundbreaking In-Store Music Research: Brand-fit background music increases sales, affects customer perception and store staff satisfaction. In conversation with Sven-Olov Daunfeldt, Head of Research Institute of Retail Economics.

My guest today is my dear friend and research colleague Sven-Olov Daunfeldt. We were connected for the first time when I randomly called him for advice in 2015, and surprisingly we started working together when I started at Soundtrack Your Brand the same year.

Sven-Olov grew up in Kiruna, one of the coldest spots in the north of Sweden. He trains powerlifting and calls him self Sweden’s strongest professor in the world. I say, he is Sweden’s coolest professor, listening to hard rock, and country music.

Sven-Olov has a Ph.D. in Economics from Umeå University and is today a professor of Economics at Dalarna University, in Sweden. During the day he is the Head of Research at Handelns Forskningsinstitut and under his belt he has for over 20 years analyzed the retail industry, and some of his other research areas are Entrepreneurship, business development, structural change, and taxation.

In his day-to-day work, Sven-Olov collaborates closely with different companies to get unique access to
consumer data and, to investigate questions that are important from both an academic and a business perspective.

In collaboration with Soundtrack Your Brand, he and I conducted the biggest field experiment of its kind. Sven-Olov has written more than 100 papers, of which over 40 are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

In this episode, Sven-Olov and I discuss the ins and outs of the effects of brand-fit in-store music on sales and on customer and store staff’s satisfaction.