It may be that some money has been spent researching this, but I am convinced that the music in almost all stores is merely the popular music that the 40+ male managers have been hearing since they were teenagers. To most of them, that's what music IS.

To them, anybody who's not a white, male, youngish, successful person is not really a person. All other people are just different forms of "weird." And so their musical reactions are of no validity, either.

And all this time, they can't figure out why fewer and fewer people want to shop.