Interac, a leading debit payment provider in Canada, wanted to help Canadians take control of their money, to reinforce the benefits of using their own money and living within their means. However, inflation in 2022 made people feel powerless while shopping.

To return a feeling of control Interac launched Sound Shopping, a custom-music track rooted in behavioural science and designed to help Canadians shop more intentionally.

In-store music is carefully designed to influence shoppers' behaviour. For example, slow music encourages slow browsing while sad songs increase grocery expenditures. Sound Shopping interrupts automatic shopping behaviour by using tempo, mode, and instrumentation to create a more intentional shopping experience so that listeners can spend within their means. The music track leverages the same behavioural research that retailers use to design in-store soundscapes, but turns it on its head.

This 22-minute instrumental track aligns with the length of the average shopping trip [Statists Canada, 2018]. It was designed for shoppers to listen to, while they visit retail environments, to encourage intentional spending within their means and combines a variety of tempos, instrumentation and nature sounds for a unique focusing effect. Consumers who listened to the Sound Shopping track reported higher levels of calm and near-universal (98%) satisfaction with their purchases.

The track was promoted across owned channels, Sound Cloud and Spotify, and ultimately had an impressive impact on consumers and the Interac brand.

Participants who listened to the Sound Shopping reported higher levels of calm and near-universal (98%) satisfaction with their purchases. And participants in our core target of 25–34, were likely to spend 38% less when listening to the curated track.

Since launch, over 46,000 Canadians have visited the Sound Shopping experience on Interac.ca spending on average three minutes (+40% over site average). The experience earned positive attention for Interac, receiving 13.1 million impressions across 61 press mentions, including in the Toronto Star, Yahoo Finance, and The Globe and Mail, positioning Interac as a problem-solver for the “inflation-weary” Canadian shopper.

While Interac couldn’t impact prices on the shelves at retail, it could effectively impact the environment and mindset of consumers while shopping to encourage positive intentional spending behaviour.