By Randy Tucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

With Christmas on the horizon, stores and malls in Greater Cincinnati have a new breed of up-tempo and hip-hop holiday tunes cued up and ready to rock.

The piped-in holiday music that most stores will begin broadcasting in the next few weeks isn't played just to put shoppers in a cuddle-up-and-sip-eggnog mood. It's meant to put them in the spirit to spend.

"Playing the right music has a lot of commercially beneficial effects ... not necessarily for the customer, but for the seller," James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati, told UC Horizons magazine.

So you'll still catch Nat King Cole crooning about chestnuts on an open fire. However, as retailers target younger shoppers, traditional carols sung by contemporary artists - Britney Spears on "White Christmas" or Snoop Dogg's rendition of "Frosty the Snowman" - will dominate the in-store music this season, said Patrick Wissman, Cincinnati sales manager for DMX Music, which provides background music to retailers.

"There's still some creative mixing going on, where some of the old classics are mixed in with the up-tempo stuff," he said. "But the average retail store is more interested in the pop side of it."

The holiday songs most frequently played last year were "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas," but they were sung by 400 different artists, according to a survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Holiday music must be more than simply fast-paced to be effective, Wissman said. It must be customized to meet the tastes of a store's clientele.

"If you're an urban retailer selling Fubu or Sean John, your customers aren't necessarily going to want to hear Bruce Springsteen doing 'First Noel,' although his version may be up-tempo, too," Wissman said.

UC's Kellaris, an authority on the impact of music on consumer behavior, has researched the commercial uses of music for more than 15 years. He's has found that up-tempo Christmas music delivers subliminal clues that spark a sense of excitement, making a store seem festive.

The longer shoppers linger, the more money they're likely to spend on gifts and spur-of-the-moment purchases, Kellaris said.

Music is part of a package designed to put shoppers in the gift-giving spirit. But while store decorations often go up before Halloween, retailers traditionally have held off on playing Christmas music until around Thanksgiving to avoid annoying customers and employees with the same music repeated over and over.

But after two dismal years, retailers say this year's Christmas shopping season - which can account for as much as 25 percent of many stores' annual sales - is too important to miss any opportunity.

At least one retailer has stepped up its Christmas music schedule to stay competitive. J.C. Penney, which waited until after Thanksgiving to play Christmas music last year, says it will let the music play on Nov. 21. Others are expected to follow suit.

"We're already set for Christmas at the stores, and we want to set the holiday mood to be in sync with our competitors," spokesman Quinton Crenshaw said.

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E-mail rtucker@enquirer.com