Edited by Douglas Harbrecht

PUT ON PAVAROTTI -- AND WATCH THE CHIANTI SALES SOAR

Attention shoppers! The music you hear warbling in the background may be determining what you buy.

That's the conclusion of an intriguing new study by a team of researchers led by Adrian C. North at the University of Leicester in Britain. Using a British supermarket as their laboratory, the scientists put four German wines and four French wines on a shelf in the drinks section. Then, on different days, they played either French accordion music or hearty German Bierkeller tunes.

The results, reported in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature, were startling. On the French music days, customers snapped up three times as much French wine as German wine. But when the Germanic songs filled the supermarket, the pattern was reversed: The German varieties flew off the shelves three times faster than their French counterparts.

What's more, the music's influence was apparently subtle. When questioned, wine buyers scoffed at the idea that background music could affect their decisions. The bottom-line message: People may be more susceptible to outside influences than most of us think.

By John Carey in Washington