WHAT A BACKGROUND MUSIC CAN DO
ERASMUS UNIVERSITY ROTTERDAM
FACULTY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS
MARKETING
Name: Irina Chatarina
Student Number: 389354
Supervisor: Havranek, G.W
Email Address: [email protected]
Study: Marketing
Thesis: Bachelor
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Table of Contents
1.
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Background ......................................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................. 6
1.3 Research Objective ............................................................................................................................. 6
2.
Methodology......................................................................................................................................... 8
3.
Findings ................................................................................................................................................. 9
3.1 The views ............................................................................................................................................ 9
3.1.1 What experts say ......................................................................................................................... 9
3.1.2 Managers theories ..................................................................................................................... 12
3.2 Dimensions of music ......................................................................................................................... 15
3.2.1 Music characteristic as stimulus ................................................................................................ 16
3.2.2
Affective and objective ....................................................................................................... 19
3.2.3
Foreground and background music and its relation to age and shopping intention ......... 21
3.3
Store Dimensions ........................................................................................................................ 24
3.3.1 Music congruency in service setting .......................................................................................... 24
3.3.2
3.4
Brand perception ................................................................................................................ 27
Other benefit of background music ............................................................................................ 30
4.
Discussion............................................................................................................................................ 31
5.
Conclusion and Recommendation ...................................................................................................... 38
5.1 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 38
5.2 Recommendation.............................................................................................................................. 39
6. References .............................................................................................................................................. 40
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1. Introduction
1.1 Background
Consumer behavior is often strongly influenced by subtle environmental cues. There is
traditional perspective that consumer choice is based on conscious information. But I
propose that many choices made unconsciously are strongly affected by the environment.
Music is one important environmental cue that can be set up by marketers. Music has been
long considered an efficient and effective mean for triggering moods and communicating
nonverbally. It has become a major component of marketing, both in purchasing and
advertising.
Music itself is categorized by its objective structural properties of time, pitch, and texture
(Bruner, 1990). Examples of properties along the time dimension are tempo, rhythm, and
phrasing, while the pitch dimension includes the properties of mode, harmony, melodic
contour, and ambitus. The dimension of texture includes timbre – a complex function of log
attack time, spectral centroid, and spectral flux (McAdams, Winsberg, Donnadieu, De Soete,
& Krimphoff, 1995) – as well as instrumentation, volume, and dynamics. To the composer,
musician, or sound designer, these properties provide the mean to systematically change
the overall nature of the music. On the listener’s side, relative property configuration not
only determines cognitive and affective responses to music, but also influences
physiological responses such as respiration, skin conductance, and heart rate (Gomez &
Danuser, 2007).
In some journals I read, researchers believed that music applied as the background sound
in a store contains subliminal message. Subliminal message in music contribute a
significant effect on choice behavior. Subliminal message are assumed to function as
auditory primers. Subliminal techniques are used for advertising and propaganda purposes
it usually use to deliver message that waved into song by the band’s producers. It also can
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be manipulated and undertaking consumer perception. In other words, worded message
can be embedded and hidden in music in intention of manipulating listener’s behavior.
By emphasizing the potential for music to influence individual affect, cognition, and
behavior which in turn impacts consumer behavior and decision making, marketers invest
substantial resources in an effort to effectively incorporate music into the design of retail
environments (Morrison & Beverland, 2003). Considerable research in the field of
atmospherics has examined the effects of high level, global properties of music including
music versus no-music comparisons (Park & Young, 1986), background versus foreground
conditions (Morrison, Gan, Dubelaar, & Oppewal, 2011; Yalch & Spangenberg, 1993), and
comparisons of the effects of differing musical genre (Areni & Kim, 1993; North, Hargreaves,
& McKendrick, 2000; North, Shilcock, & Hargreaves, 2003). Related research has focused on
properties not inherent to music itself, but to variables arising either from the interplay
between music and the environment (interaction between music and scent; Spangenberg,
Grohmann, & Sprott, 2005; fit of music and store image; Vida, Obadia, & Kunz, 2007), or the
interplay between music and participant (musical preferences; Caldwell & Hibbert, 2002;
subjective liking; Vida et al., 2007; shopper’s familiarity with the music; Yalch & Spangenberg,
2000). Empirical studies cited above seem to attest that background music has a positive
impact in consumer’s behavior.
The store environment contains various stimuli that might be perceived by the customer’s
senses; each stimulus varies along many parameters. For example, store music varies by
volume, tempo, pitch and texture and by the specific songs played. In addition, factors can
be combined to create unique atmospheres. A manager might choose classical music,
subdued colors, elegant perfumes, cool temperatures, sparsely displayed merchandise, and
low lighting to project an upscale image. The variety of music genre is usually based on the
type of goods sold in the store. Bookstores tend to use slow tempo pop music or simple
jazz. But nowadays, modern bookstore chooses new age acoustic as their background
music genre. Hypermarkets always use its jingle that keep haunting as long as you stay in
the store. High-end restaurants are typically using standard jazz and classical as the
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background music. Most cafés play top 40s and songs that are “in” in the time. And clothing
store, depend on what kind of clothes it sell, applied different type of music.
1.2 Problem Statement
Music is one of the important stimuli to build the character of a store. A lot of store
managers do not aware of this fact because they just do not know a thing about it. Thus, an
important question to start this research is “What are those important factors to be consider
about to build a play list for in-store background music?”
1.3 Research Objective
This paper is made to examine the behavioral effects of music with special emphasis on
expressionism and role as a stimulus of marketing activity both in purchasing. It will
impact to consumer pace on spending their money on particular goods by applying
different types of music in the background. It is a literature based research to see how
theories and mechanism of music works on consumer behavior in the real world
application, retrieved from previous research data.
Many experiments were conducted to learn how individuals who are engaged in a shopping
activity might be affected by environmental music varying in its perceived familiarity to the
shoppers. There also a lot of researches concern about the relationship between music and
perceived time. Perceptions of greater duration appear to be associated with awareness of
environment and activities occurring in it. Because listening to music seems to cause
individuals to be more vigilant compared with not listening to music at all. Consumer
expected to perceive more time passing. Thus, it is expected that for consumer who had a
fixed amount of time to shop, individuals would estimate that more time transpired when
listening to good music.
Another concern is the effect of music on product evaluations. Because individuals were
expected to feel more comfortable in an environment featuring familiar atmospheric
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elements than unfamiliar ones, their product evaluations were expected to be more
favorable.
The last issue pertains to meditating role of emotional measure of pleasure, arousal and
dominance. Individuals are expected to evidence more arousal, more pleasure, and greater
sense of dominance when listening to good music. These emotional responses, in turn, are
expected to account for some of the effect of music on perceived and actual shopping times
and product evaluation.
This also could be useful for the managers or the companies to increase sales by setting the
best suitable environment that persuades consumer perception and learning process.
Subliminal message contains in the background music as the set of a store hopefully helps
managers to attract consumer to purchase and keep coming back for more and build a
consumer loyalty in the believe that consumer feel comfortable and enjoy the environment
of the store and its fitness with the types of goods sold in the particular store.
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2. Methodology
Literature based methodology
The question of this research will be proven by analyzing the existing literature. To ensure
the quality and rigor of the research, the process of the methodology should define and
posing the research question, support the study, and ethically approved. The sample of this
research is 30 available literatures about subliminal message, music studies and consumer
behavior. The types of data are journals and reviews between 1950 until 2014.
This research stated with the appraising data process by scoping the meaningful and
practical, searching and selecting the appropriate data, and analyzing the literature as a
whole. The next step is Synthesis of the data. Interpretative comparison and inductive
analysis is done in this stage. Lastly, the data being extracted by combining some critiques
and identifying some important information.
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3. Findings
One good thing about Starbucks is that it plays a lot of Jobim and Gilberto’s song, where the
customer can really relate the ambience and coffee just by listening to their songs. Most of
the customers do not even know who is singing or even know what genre is playing. But
somehow they like the way Starbucks set their play list. To see what is really happening
behind the successfulness of Starbucks on setting its playlist, this paper constructed based
on theories about what music can do to help marketers maximize their profit, and
addressed in four ways to distinguish and classify those theories in a more informational
way.
3.1 The views
To see the perfect picture about the basic of how music works as a background sound of a
store, I compare two views by experts who study in this field and managers who directly
deal with this problem.
3.1.1 What experts say
About background music and mood
Mood created by music happen to influence a lot of aspect of consumer decision. Kris
Goffin (2014) in his paper conclude that moods are relevant to aesthetic experience and
considered as cluster of feeling and music feels the way moods feel. He also believes that
music and mood are strongly related and come one after another. The mood the music
evokes can help listener to focus on the expressiveness quality of the music. And since
mood create bias; moods can affect the way the listeners perceive. For example, when a
person is in his happy mood, we are more inclined to think that the faces we encounter
look happy (Niedenthal ey al., 2001). In the music context, music draws out a mood that
helps the listener to focus more on the specific expressive qualities of the music. For
example, by listening to Debussy’s “Prelude a l’apres-midi d’un faune”, listener will get the
mood of languid (Robinson, 2005). The evocation of the mood can help the recognition of
the expressed mood in the music, as the evoked mood aids the discovery of meaning and
movement in the music (carroll and Moore, 2007).
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But in the other hand, Zangwill (2004) disagree and argue that mood lacks of intentional
object and is not relevant to the aesthetic experiences as such. In simple, if somebody is
angry, there must be something that caused that anger. But mood like melancholy does not
have a specific intentional object. It might cause by particular event, but not directed to
anything. Robinson (2010) agreed with this statement and pointed out that even music
makes somebody feels sad, but he is not sad because of the music. Thus, everything that is
relevant to the aesthetic experience of music must have music as its intentional object or
otherwise, it would not be an experience of music.
Other than Zangwill, Kivy (2006, 2007) describe that the expressivity of instrumental
music is not felt, but recognized. We discover music’s expressivity through our mind but
not our moods. Instrumental music might be expressive for moods, but only recognized by
attending to the formal aspect of the music. He also mentioned that formalism presupposes
is a conical way of listening to music. Meaning that music might influence mood and any
other personal association, but they are not part of the appreciation of music as a fine art. It
is like a different person respond differently to the music, it is highly subjective. The
listener loses herself in mind-wandering, instead of focusing on the music.
Michael Tye (1995) in the other side argues that we can feel the mood when we feel our
bodies change in a certain way and leads to a specific mood. The felt character of mood
consists of feelings, which have intentional objects. The idea is that each mood is related to
a certain cluster of feeling. Every mood is different and denominating is not something that
cannot be explained by logic. It is hard to express the mood we experience.. Stern (1985)
describes feeling as “vitality effect”. It is different with pain, pleasure, and hunger since all
of it are dynamic. It is more like something that represented as surging, fading away,
fleeting, explosive, tentative, effortful, accelerating, decelerating, climaxing, bursting, and
drown out. In 2010, Stern pointed out that these vitality affects occur while listening to
music. Since music has “dynamic aspect” such as crescendo, tension and release and those
feeling will represent as explosive, bursting and drawn out.
Langer says that music is the dynamics of feeling and a symbolic representation of effective
dynamics. It is something that so called “inner-life” – physical or mental which have formal
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properties similar to those music, pattern of motion and rest, of tension and release, or
agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfillment excitation, sudden change, and so on
(1957). As what Pratt (1931) describe about it, it is merely sounds the way moods feel.
In conclusion, listener’s entire mood is not directly relevant to aesthetic experience of
music, but more in the form the distinction of listener’s general mood. Mood itself consists
of different feelings and musical moods are cluster of music-induced feeling which is
paradigmatic for a certain mood.
About subliminal message
In our daily life, worded message can be embedded and hidden in music in order to
manipulate the listener’s behavior. This is what is so called subliminal message contained
in song. Subliminal perception is characterized by perception without awareness or, any
situation in which unnoticed stimuli are perceived (Merikle, 2000). The stimuli might be
inaudible to conscious mind but deep inside, there is images transmitted so briefly that
they are perceived only subconsciously.
One of the evidence of the existence of subliminal message is that visual subliminal
contains priming effect. Priming is the process of activation a mental representation and its
connection to memory in relation to a perceived stimulus. Because of the activation, the
connections are more accessible quickly then if they were not primed by the stimulus.
Blandin and Dehane (2002) make an experiment about it and found that respondents tend
to choose something which presented subliminally in a greater speed when the subject was
congruent to the stimuli. Subliminal priming can activate the connection in the memory
and make responses faster. In number, priming effect disappears if the length of time
between priming and target stimulus is greater than 100ms. Friendman et al., (2005) also
tested this theory by conducting another experiment. Males who were subliminally primed
with words related to alcohol rated women as more attractive than when they were primed
with words that are not related to alcohol. The priming words were presented only for a
few milliseconds on the screen before the attractiveness of a woman had to be evaluated in
a subsequent picture.
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In the store setting, consumer might not focus on the music and listen to the lyric. So, how
words in music can influence people if they cannot actually hear them? Two answers can
be given to this question. First of all, from a modern psychological perspective there is
evidence that the mere belief in the existence of subliminal message is sufficient to induce
effects. Yet, we can see that consumers’ behavior is influenced by their presumption about
subliminal message and not by the information masked by the music (Greenwald et al.,
1991; Markle and Skanes, 1992; Pratkanis, 1992). Second, stimuli below the listening
threshold can result in physiological reactions like change of heart rate, galvanic skin
response and so on. And even in the case of unconscious perception, information
processing on a physiological level cannot be excluded (Borgeat and Goulet, 1983).
Physiological reaction also depends on the content of the message. In the case of target
words that contain sexuality, physiological reaction failed to appear (Borgeat, Elie, Chaloult
& Chabot, 1985). There is no certain rule that subliminal message and its relation to
unconsciousness and cause physiological reaction as indicator as subliminal information
processing.
3.1.2 Managers theories
Some might think that every theory is not valid unless it has made applicable. In 2002,
Charles S. Areni conducted an experiment about managers’ theory of how atmospheric
music affects perception, behavior and financial performance. Basically, particular
emphasis has been placed on atmospheric music designed to create commercial
environment that produce specific emotional effects in the buyer that enhance his purchase
intentions (Kotler, 1973). Thus, using the membership lists for the Australian Hotel
Association and the Australian Restaurant and Catering Association, He conducted
unstructured interviews with some hotels, bar and restaurant managers to explore their
opinion about how atmospheric music affects consumers.
Circadian Rhythm
The first belief of managers is that atmospheric music must go through the circadian
rhythm. Meaning that, music must be varied as the day progresses to fit the desired level of
arousal. According to some restaurant managers interviewed by Areni, the music must
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consist of mixture of things, depending on whether it is morning, lunch or evening. Other
thinks that it depends on the time of the day. In the afternoon or evenings, the music that
must be played is soft guitar music. Essentially, in the morning, music has to be soft and
slow because costumer are just waking up and preparing for the new day. Very low tempo
music is good to start the morning off. You cannot put really loud music because you have
got to slowly break in. But as noon come by, managers choose to change it to more of an upbeat acid jazz style of music for lunch time. But for the evening music, managers believe
that there is no particular choice. The decision about what music to play solely depends on
the day of the week, the particular crowd on a given night, and several other factors.
in the other side, academic literature describe the atmospheric music in terms of optimal
levels of stimulation or OLS (Bruner, 1990; Herrington and Capella, 1994; North and
Hargreaves, 1996) and variation by the part of the day (Herrington and Caeplla, 1996) are
both based on the underlying personality and demographic differences among consumers.
Circadian rhythm hypothesis implies a general effect that is different for each individual
according to the time of the day even though it is also treated as constituting an original
theory of atmospheric music.
Repetition
The second belief of the manager is that repetition is also a crucial factor in determining
the play set of the background music and its effectiveness to create the atmosphere. If
customers hear a selection once too often, it can destroy the enjoyable service encounter. It
is not nice to listen to the same CD six times in a row. It start getting a little bit old on the
ears when you hear them at every single service for months on end, so at certain point, they
get accustomed to the play list and know every part of the song by heart, they know which
song’s coming up next. That’s the good time to change the music. A TV or radio hits could
also lead to a repetition problem. It is like, everybody hears Britney Spears a million times a
day, and it becomes very mundane and boring, and the last thing they want to be nearing is,
at dinner, her again.
In the marketing literature side, there are some negative affective consequences of
advertising wear out effects (Obermiller, 1985; Sawyer, 1981). The truth is that the relation
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between repetitive music and customer behavior has not been explored yet. But many
scholars believe that it must be treated as a novel theory worth of investigation.
Anti-social Behavior
The next belief of managers is that atmospheric music provokes anti-social behavior.
Specific genre or format has unique capacity to calm or to rile customer. Managers cannot
play something like AC/DC head banging sort of, tends to incite a type of generation.
Another manager also uses a classic music as a backup if there is a problem in the playlist.
Background Noise
Background noises are also a matter in the making of the perfect atmosphere. Respondents
proclaim the ability of atmospheric music to blackout annoying background noises such as
cutlery clinking, babies crying and loud conversation. It is just the matter of something light
in the background to take away the restaurant noise pollution; noise like clattering knives
and fork. It also exterminates the noise factor, simply because it sounds better to have
some sort of music in the background. And by chance, music helps soften the sounds
between people’s conversation.
Time Estimating
The fifth belief of manager is that consumer may use musical selection as a quasi-clock for
estimating much time has passed. For instance, the average tune is three minutes, and if it
is already the second song, the customer has been waiting for five minutes. To tackle this
kind of mind trick, it needs a sort of music that does not really take the consumer’s mind off
what they want to communicate.
Theoretical explanation for the effect of music on the perception of time is that the
simplistic notion that time passes more quickly when atmospheric music is enjoyable
(Wansink, 1992). There is also a theory saying that consumers have the discrete events
kind of thing in their memory as a heuristic for judging the passage of time. Since it has
more beats per minutes, consumers tend to overestimate the amount of time that has
passed in the high tempo rather than the slow one (Kellaris and Kent, 1992).
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Interaction among Consumers
The very last belief created by managers according to Arenis’ experiment is that music can
facilitate interaction among customers. When music plays, and if costumers’ conversation
sort of runs dead, they will drift off and have a listen and then get back to what they are
doing. It is also good to put on something which will encourage the customer to start
talking. Music was a power to alleviate uncomfortable social situation. Yet it encourages
people to talk, and as the background music going, costumer will feel a bit more
comfortable, rather than when nothing plays as the background. It is like an evaluator
music expression. People do not want to stand and looking at each other and feel
uncomfortable. If they can pretend to listen to something else, there is a degree of comfort
factor in that.
Workers dilemma
As already mentioned above, it is clearly true that background music can create
atmosphere and it is important to build a store image. The impact of background music is
not only applied for consumers, but, after some researchers expand their research field, in
certain manufacturing firm, background music can also relieve job monitory, level out
noise peak and even improve employee morale.
But Douglas and Lincoln (1981) found that employees did not like the background music
because it is monotone, lack variety and inconsistent with personal reference. Since the
manager have to choose the song which is good for consumer’ relaxing music, but it is also
ruin the working atmosphere of the employees. The logical explanation is those consumers
spend a limited amount of time in a store. Consumers do not expose to repetition, but
employees. Employees hear the background music throughout their working day.
3.2 Dimensions of music
There are many dimensions of music to see in order to find out how background music
influence consumer behavior. Characteristic, Affectivity, Subjectivity and whether the
music is foreground or background are for among hundreds of dimension that will be
discussed in this paper.
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3.2.1 Music characteristic as stimulus
Music is considered as an efficient and effective means for triggering moods and
communicating nonverbally, thus it becomes a major component of consumer marketing. It
is believed as a powerful stimulus for affecting mood. In a paper by Gordon C. Bruner
(1990), He divided music in to three related findings that will result into mood and will be
useful for marketing activity; those three findings illustrate the sort of beliefs held by
musicians that evokes particular feeling.
Tempo
First, Time-related findings talk mostly about tempo. In the cateris paribus, fast music is
considered to be more happy and/or pleasant than slow music (Gundlach, 1935; Rigg,
1940a) In the other hand, slow tempo have the tendency to evoke tranquil, sentimental and
solemn feeling (Henver, 1937). These findings lead to a conclusion that musical pace have
a strong correlation with feelings. The range of the preference is more likely to be varying
with the context and may not be as important to determining preference as musical genre
(Cupchik, Rockert and Mendelson, 1982). Rhythm is also one of the important aspects.
Duple rhythms produced a rigid and controlled expression in comparison with triple
rythem, which is more relaxed or abandoned. Firm rhythm tend to be more sacred, serious,
and robust; smooth-flowing rhythms are likely to be happy, playful and dreamy (Henver,
1936), brilliant and aminated (Gundlach, 1935). While uneven rhythm was perceived to
express dignity. Phrasing is also an important aspect in music characteristic (Wedin,1972).
Specifically, staccato-note-filled music gives a liveliness, energy, and agitation impression
when played with great volume. And just like smooth-flowing rhythms, legato music is
perceived as peaceful, gentle and dreamy.
Pitch
The second finding is pitch-related. Major mode makes dynamic and positive expression
and minor mode produces the negative expression. Why? The minor mode has plaintive,
angry, or mysterious qualities in contrast to the happy, bright or playful expression of the
major mode (Henver 1935a; Scherer and Oshinky, 1977). Consonant harmonies can be
described as playful, happy or serene, while dissonant harmonies seem to be more
agitating, ominous and sad (Henver,1936; Waston, 1942; Wedin; 1972). Ascending melodic
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line tends to be viewed as dignified while the descending one is more exhilarating and
serene (hanver, 1936). Composition with more than one octave is more likely to be seemed
more brilliant than those with less than an octave range (gundlach, 1935).
Texture
Third, Texture-related finding is the most uncommon yet important to the overall finding.
It talks more about the orchestration of a song. Brass instruments expressed awkward and
mournful feeling. Piano melodies perceived as brilliant and tranquil and strings represent
gladness (Gundlach, 19365). Woodwinds are whimsical and brass are serious and majestic
(Kinnear, 1959; Van Stone, 1960). Volume is also the variable of texture. Loudest piece
were described as triumphant and animated, where softest piece were more delicate and
tranquil (Gundlach, 1935). According to Waston (1942), loudest song shows excitement
and soft piece perceived as peaceful.
In its relation to marketing, the effect of music on moods and purchase intention is
negative; happy music leads to happier moods in subjects, but sad music produced the
highest purchase intention. How so? Structure and expressiveness of background music
can evoke different moods and purchase intention (Alpert and Alpert, 1986). Holbrook and
Anand (1988) observed as tempo increased, so did affect up to a point, then it decreased
will produce a preferable mood and leads to a higher arousal.
In a grocery store
experiment, Smith and Curnow (1966) indicate that the volume level of music was
correlated negatively with shopping time but not the associated with average sales per
person. The sales per minute were higher under the loud music condition. The most
famous of all, Milliman (1982) experiments the music tempo in supermarket and
restaurant and found that in-store traffic flow was significantly slower with slow music (72
BPM or less) than with fast music (94BPM or more). as the implication, sales volume was
significantly higher with slow music than the higher one. And in the restaurant experiment
(1986), he found that customer eat slower and leave later with the slow-music. Costumer
bar bills were better in slow-music condition.
As the conclusion, Bruner draw some proposition about the connection between music,
mood and marketing. The components of music are capable of having main as well as
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interaction effects on moods, cognitions, and behaviors of interest in marketers. The sum
of the expression created by the characteristics is in the table below.
The structural nature of music is related to its ability to achieve various purposes. One
music is not applicable to all purposes. To explore the various purposes, marketers might
try to match the emotion of some music to express the visual or verbal portion (Vinovich,
1975). The emotion perceived to be expressed in musical stimuli is capable of evoking
corresponding affective reaction in listener. Theory supporting this says that there are
dynamics forms of expression specific to each emotion, and the ability of a stimulus to
evoke an emotion depends heavily on the purity of expression (Clynes, 1977).
The influence of music on persuasiveness is greatest under condition of peripheral route
processing and low cognitive involvement. It might also have a role even under condition of
high cognitive involvement, specifically, the direction and amount of issue-relevant
(Gardner, 1985). Several variables also moderate the relationships between music and
consumer responses. by it means, the familiarity of the music to listener (Fontaine and
Schwalm, 1979), music enjoyment
(Gorn, 1982) and prior mood ( Eagle, 1971) are
important moderators. Last of all, some responses to music are learned whereas other is
inherent. Responses to music are created not only by the person or environment
separately, but interaction between the two (Clynes, 1977). “Similarity” is a key to found
the expressiveness. Therefore, greater understanding is needed of which structural
elements we respond to differently as a result of learning.
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3.2.2 Affective and objective
Affective
Music is not an objective fact to the average listener, but it is more likely defined in term of
meaning assigned by the listener (Herrington and Capella, 1994). Beside than its cognitive
characteristics and structural characteristics, music can also be interpreted in emotional
terms, or, we can say; affective component (Agmon, 1990). Easier way to describe it is by
defining it by it composition of emotional tone; some might be related as happy and other
is sad songs (Bruner, 1990). Music, by it various elements, can arouse and express feeling
such as happiness or sadness. Listener themselves could also identify a feeling associated
with particular musical piece on a consistent manner. Alpert (1990) generated an
experiment using a greeting card paired with happy and sad music and conclude that sad
music produced higher purchase intentions than happy music. Hence, background music
used did make a statistically significant difference. The logical explanation behind this is
that sad music is more congruent with stimulus greeting card than the happy music.
Kellaris and Kent (1994) added that happy music might have been more distracting than
the sad one and that speed or tempo of happy music could also be one of the reasons.
Thus in the finding, Broekmier, Marquarat and Gentry (2008) assumed that consumers
who judge the stimulus music as happy should have greater intentions to shop in the
stimulus store than consumer who judge the stimulus music to be sad.
Objective
When a costumer listening to liked music, it will enhance brand preference relative to
listening to disliked music (Gorn, 1982). In the other way around, disliked music led to
negative attitude toward a brand (Shimp, 1992). Actually, this notion is not applicable to all
kind of situation; liked music is not necessarily the most appropriate music to use in all
situations (Yalch and Spangenberg, 1990). Liking for music is positively correlated with
how happy subjects would be to return to an environment, supporting the idea that liked
music could influence people to an environment (North and Hargreaves, 1996). Desirable
music choices may attract intention to shop in a particular shop. Thus it can be concluding
that shopping intention will be greater when consumers are exposed to liked music.
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To explain a little bit about that, Mattila and Wirtz (2001) said that under the investigation
of high and low arousal music, desirable music choice influences intentions to shop in
particular retail environment. By playing liked music, consumers will get largest direct
effect on the likelihood of shopping in the stimulus store. But as liked or disliked music is
assessed in more types of service settings with differing target markets, it is important for
the retail managers to insure that they are playing a music that fit to their target market.
How does music objectivity happen?
Sound is a simple process that arrays some questions such as: what sounds were rich,
interesting, new, and not being made at the moment? Style took the form of the product
itself, language, nonverbal behavior, and so on. Sensibility is new ideas, outlooks, values,
and views of the world. These experiments were embraced and expressed by new bands
which are higher in term of order integration of the cultural innovation. Bands gave the
innovation still more form and specificity. They made it easier to read and therefore more
influential. Or to imply this theory to this research, we can assume the band as the choice of
the song.
Right after that, the bands started a new round of experimentation in matters of sound,
style, and sensibility. The band after that created the image of them as how they want to be
interpreted. Style grew more pronounced, sensibility better defined.
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With this we saw the emergence of a subculture, a characteristic way of seeing, acting in,
and defining the world and then it creates the particular images within ourselves.
Subcultures gave a unique way of being. Those who defined themselves as "punks" or
"preps" had a clear road map: how to dress, how to talk, what to care about, what to listen
to. Thus this is how a certain preference created. Nevertheless, that is how certain person
can be clicked to a certain music; that they feel that they belong to that music.
Mediating each other
There are at least three primary dimension of any musical composition: A physical
dimension such as volume, pitch, tempo and rhythm, an emotional tone and a preferential
dimension such as the degree to which a shopper likes the music. There is also a
compounding effect of these dimensions. Playing happy or sad music which consumer like
will induce shopping intention while playing sad music that consumer dislike will destroy
consumers’ shopping intention. The idea is that music that is both happy and liked will
create a greater intention as the store stimulus.
Actually, the important attribute to consider is the shopping intention when consumer
heard happy music that they liked. SO, while playing either happy music or liked music
alone, the tendency to shop will increase, thus retailer should pay a great attention to the
type of music they play; the happy music that is liked by its target markets to achieve the
greatest positive effect of music on patronage behavior toward retail service environment.
It is quite easy to classify music as happy or sad and consumer can highly involve to the
decision. Some might say that there are a lot of retail stores that play appropriate musical
selections, it must be noted that since not all consumers like the happy music or dislike the
sad one; like and happy are not necessarily synonymous. Thus it is quit hard to determine
the limitation of happy and liked music of consumers.
3.2.3 Foreground and background music and its relation to age and shopping
intention
Music can be categorized in many ways such as type, tempo, vocals and so. Here, Yalch and
Spangenberg (1990) emphasize the different between foreground and background music.
The difference between this two is that foreground music includes original artist and lyrics,
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while background music uses studio musicians playing instrumentals. There are some
claims saying that foreground suits retail environment better than background music (Lee,
1984). Background music also tends to be more restricted in its range of tempos,
frequencies and volume. Foreground music commands more command more attention
from customers while they shop, thus foreground music might alter consumers’ mood and
their perception of the amount of time more than background music.
Foreground and background
Firstly, it was predicted that positive mood will be gained with background music rather
than nothing at all. And because it is distracting, customers; perception of time were
expected to be longer with foreground music than background music.
The result of the experiment shows that foreground music resulted in a higher level of
perceived activity while shopping than background music. Other than that, no-music
condition was more arousing than the foreground music condition because of the loss
sound masking provided by music. The effect of music on shoppers’ spending more money
and time more than they have expected happens if they liking of the music. The only
significant difference was for liking, is that consumer’s show positive attitude toward
foreground music, and negative attitude toward the background music.
Age
In term of demographic, shoppers’ age is also one of the important things to be considered.
Radio station target listener varied in race, age, sex and their choice on music format. Age is
one of the strongest variables associated to the preference of different music format. The
differences are evident in shopping environments, given that different-aged customers
reacted differently to foreground and background store music.
Younger shopper were expected to react more positively to foreground music than to
background music, and so the opposite. Young people under the age of 25, who usually
listen to Top Forty music, respond better to the foreground music than background music.
But for those who was aged more than 25 years old tend to enjoy easy-listening-type of
background music. Anyhow, both young and old shoppers choose foreground music as
more desirable than the background music, even though there was a sharp decline in liking
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of foreground music among 50 years old shoppers and older. And for younger customers,
foreground music is easier to be received. Another effect of age is that there is a significant
interaction between type of music and shoppers’ age on perceived time spent shopping.
Younger shoppers tend to spend more time shopping than they planed when exposed to
the background music. In contrast, older shoppers reacted this way to the foreground
product.
Intention to shop
Basically, mood effects will be so much more important for leisure shopper than purposeful
shoppers, whereas time effect will impact purposeful shopper than leisurely shoppers. The
purpose of the shopping can be divided in the term of the time of the day. Some costumers
have specific purchases intention and go to a store to fulfill their intention. Other is not
certain about what they are going to buy and have a little less attention to purchase
anything. This browser may expect to acquire product information or maybe merely killing
time. The good thing is that the buying impulse could occur and led to an unplanned
purchase. Most of purposeful shoppers were expected during the morning and during the
evening and on the weekend. There could also be a possibility that music would affect
purposeful shoppers differently than it would leisurely shoppers.
It is also predicted that shoppers would be in a better mood because their preference for
foreground store music and this might result to more unplanned purchase during their
leisurely shopping times than purposeful times. More specifically, during the purposeful
shopping times; the morning and afternoon, shopper reported being in a more active mood
and tended to be involved to unplanned purchase when listening to foreground music than
background music. But unfortunately, there were no difference for these measures during
the leisure shopping times; evening and weekends.
The most important finding of this research is that the clear difference in perception of the
amount of time spent shopping as a function of shoppers’ age and type of music. When
shoppers faced to the music they are familiar with (foreground music for young shoppers
and background music for older shoppers) they tend to spend less time in the store than
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they had intended compared to when it goes the other way. There are two possible
explanations about this.
First, shoppers who experience a non-typical environmental factor pay more attention to
what is happening and their ability to recall more event result in their perception of time as
being greater than it actually was. Familiar environment require less monitoring thus
customer recall less of what happened while they shopped and consequently they think
that little time has passed. Second, Individual might actually increase or decrease the
amount of time they shopped depends on the time music played as the background sound.
This might implied to their perception and anticipated change from amount of time they
had planned or normally shop.
3.3 Store Dimensions
There are also many dimensions of store to discuss to explore how to apply the right song
to the right store. Here I will talk about congruency of background music and two store
dimensions; Service setting and Brand Perception.
3.3.1 Music congruency in service setting
A paper made by Demoulin pointed out the importance of the choice of music as the media
to create congruency to the whole atmosphere in a service setting. Demoulin believes, the
atmosphere of the service setting is one of the important strategic variable for company,
especially music as background. As what previous research found, background music
positively affects affective, attitudinal and behavioral responses (Garlin and Owen, 2006).
For example, Morin et al. (2007) found that music modifies the background within which
consumer perceive and evaluate the service environment and the service provider. Areni
and Kim (1993) also found that in the retail setting, music influence the type of product
purchased. Vida et al. investigated the effect of music valence on the consumers’ behavior
and found out that the right music that fit to the store image can hold the costumer longer
in the store.
Thus, Demoulin purpose four hypotheses that test the effects of store atmosphere on
shopping behavior. Demoulin use the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model as the
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basis of his theory, where atmosphere is the stimulus (S) that provoke consumers’
evaluation (O) and resulted on the behavioral response (R). And here, adopted from
Mehrabian and Russell’s finding, emotional states are the mediator between stimuli and
consumer behavior. Emotion is something that is hard to measure, thus, Denovan and
Rositer (1982) picked only two emotional states that is believed could predict consumer
behavior best; pleasure and arousal. Pleasure is the feeling where people are happy, joyful,
and good or satisfied while arousal is a stimulated or active feeling or, for example, alert,
excited and anxious.
In the first hypothesis, Demoulin tested the effect of the perceived music congruency
directly and indirectly to consumers’ pleasure and arousal. He also try to find out whether
arousal induced by perceived music congruency increase customers’ pleasure. Just like
what Bruner (1990) said, music is a powerful stimulus for affecting mood. Garlin and Owen
(2006) investigated the effect of music characteristic in their meta-analysis research that
tempo (Miliman, 1982, 1986), style/genre (Areni and Kim, 1993) volume (Yalch and
Spangenberg, 1990) and complexity and valence (Hui et al, 1997) will affect consumers’
behavior. As the perceived result, congruency with the type of products will impact on the
type of the product purchased, time spent and the amount of money spent. Congruency
with one other element of the atmosphere affects consumers’ emotional and cognitive
response and will end in those behavior mentioned above. Furthermore, Demoulin
evaluated the effect of environmental fitness and test that perceived environmental fitness
positively influence consumers’ affective response.
In the second hyphotesis, Demoulin tested the cognitive response by pointing out two
cognitive response; service environment quality and service quality. He formulized the
hypothesis where perceived music congruency indirectly increase consumers’ cognitive
responses (the perception of environment quality and service quality) trough consumers’
pleasure and arousal. Mattila and Wirtz (2001) said that congruency of music with scent
enhance costumers’ evaluation of the store environment. Stimulus congruency basically
should lead to better perception of service quality and will indirectly increase costumers’
perception of the service and the environment. In the other hand, psychological research
has demonstrated the good moods have positive effect on consumers’ cognitive process.
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Product presented in a pleasing environment will eventually make consumers evaluate the
product better.
The third hypothesis tested the effect of the environment quality of service quality.
Demoulin posit double mediating process; music valence and service evaluation through
store setting attitude and provider attitude. He addresses that positive perception of the
service environment quality improves customers’ perceptions of service quality. And in
the last hypothesis he tested the effect of cognitive response on customers’ behavior. He
expected that consumers’ positive perception of environment quality and service quality
will increase chance of their retention.
After doing some research in a French restaurant, Demoulin found out that music
congruency increase consumer pleasure through full mediation of arousal and the combine
effect of music congruency on consumers’ pleasure is positive. He also found that pleasure
partially mediates the link between the arousal and the evaluation of environment quality.
Pleasure makes a better environment quality perception but arousal does not. Arousal and
perceived service quality is fully mediated through the perceived environment quality.
Lastly, Demoulin found that service and environment quality positively influence
customers’ return intentions.
This result shows that music congruency has a negative effect on arousal in fast food
restaurant, but leading to a low level arousal and generates high pleasure by making
consumer relaxed and calm. The effect of arousal on pleasure is basically depends on the
consumers’ motivation orientation (Kaltcheva and Weitz, 2006). They define the
motivation into task-oriented and recreational. Those with task-orientation want an
efficient shopping. Thus the arousal has a negative effect on pleasure. In other way around,
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recreational shopper expect to gain pleasure from shopping, thus arousal positively
influence pleasure.
Arousal and pleasure mediate the link between music congruency and cognitive responses.
In service quality, arousal is partially mediate pleasure but fully mediated in environment
quality. So when costumers feel low arousal and high pleasure induced by music
congruency, they evaluate service quality and environment quality more highly. Service
scape attitude also positively affect sales personnel in a store in a service context. And last
of all, good perception of service environment and service quality increase the chance of
consumer coming back to the restaurant.
3.3.2
Brand perception
One of the uses of atmospherics is to enhance brand image (Baker et al., 2002) and build
emotional connection with consumer (Schimitt and Simonson, 1997). But to make it works,
music has to be used strategically to ensure the fitness between the store brand image and
positioning (Dube and Morin, 2001; Sharma and Stafford, 2000) knowing the fact that
certain music types are more appropriate for certain stores and mismatches can have
negative result (Machleit and Eroglu, 2000). Fit means to reinforce established brand
meanings and enhancing the brand’s equity (Keller, 2003) and in the other hand, misfit will
lead to counterfactual thinking about the brand and the possibility of consumer reassessing
their view of the brand and searching out further information sources to form a new
judgment about the brand position (McColl-Kennedy and Sparks, 2003). One of the
important purposes of in-store music is that it can help the desired brand personality to
make a consistent brand image (Morrison and Beverland, 2003).
In-store music-brand fit
In their paper, Beverland, Lim, Morrison and Terziovski (2006) found several instance of
in-store music-brand fit. First of all, background music creates perception of the brand and
reinforcing the consumer-brand relationship. So, if consumers have not got any experience
or expectation of the brand, music is one of the important signaling cues about the brand
position and target market. The right music could pursue costumer to enter the store and
become a transformational experience and ended in loyalty. Background music is an
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important brand attribute and it reflects the core image of the brand. Beverland et al.
conducted an interview to some consumers of retail shop in Australia and Canada and
found that consumers think that background music is an important cue of brand attribute.
One says that background music can get consumer in the mood to shop, and distinguish
not only the product, but also the whole brand; it should be something essential and unique
that goes beyond expectation for the product class. The fitness of the background music
reinforces consumer’s expectation of the brand’s position and strengthens consumer-brand
relationship. Music that fits the brand also influences previous expectation. Therefore,
maintaining and strengthening the bond between consumer and brand is crucial because fit
reinforces the familiarity (Kotler, 2003). Consumer’s emotional responses to music-brand
fit also leads to positive cognitive appraisal of the brand and resulting to positive
behavioral outcomes.
Other consumer thinks that background music is the cue about the product range and
quality rather than the brand itself. Without prior expectation, the brand effect of the
background music is indirect since consumers create multiple cues to make inference
about fit, justifying the previous suggestion on the importance of fit for consumer with
limited or incomplete knowledge of the brand, or of the product (Baker, 1998; Baker et al.,
1994; Garbarino and Johnson, 2001).
Some other might also experience something more than just pleasant, but more akin to
extraordinary or flow experience (Czikzentmihalyi, 1990), where consumer are flown into
a magic realm and lose themselves in experience. It pushes the brand’s position image to an
emotional level and builds a stronger resonance with the brand (Keller, 2003).
In-store music-brand misfit
Eventually, misfit has two possible outcomes. Some might compare their mental image and
expectation of the brand with their experience of the in-store music. If one thinks that
those two do not fit, he begins to reassess the situation in term of “what might have been”
(McColl Kennedy and Sparks, 2003). Thus, misfit results in a not subtle shift in the brand’s
position as consumer reassesses the brand as a lower quality brand. Theoretically, misfit
challenged the perceived quality, desirability and target market of the respective brand and
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resulting in deligitimization (Kates, 2004). It could also attack the core value of the brand
and reducing the brand authenticity and challenge consumer previous assumptions about
the brand’s inner character and effectively question its legitimacy.
One of the potential damage is resulted from the consumer identification of the play set of
the store. If a store keep playing songs that is not related to the brand image, their
emotional connection to the previously loved brand will diminished, and possibly result the
consumer dropping the brand. Hence, the new background store experience conflict with
consumer’s existing perception of the brand, consumer would infer that the brand was
targeted to another market and less desirable, and diminishing the quality perception of
the brand.
In some case, it makes consumer associate the brand with lower price and the brand
position is repositioned but not the way intended by the brand manager. Misfit between
background music and brand’s position could trigger counterfactual thinking and make a
downgrade image, challenging its legitimacy or changing perception of the brand.
Music volume as moderating influence.
Any effects of background music fitness moderated by sound volume; low music volume
decrease the overall affect of the experience. Some consumer think that in the quite time,
background music is a important cue to lighten up the atmosphere, thus that is the best
moment to play with the volume. This is one of the examples of the negative effect of a lack
of music. The silence in a store results in uncomfortable feeling and imposes an unwanted
reaction on consumer to interact with staff.
But unfortunately, loud music also destroys the positive experience and leads to
dissatisfaction and store exit (Arnold et al., 2005). It makes costumer want to rush and get
it over and done with this as soon. They do not really pay much attention to the product
and just browsing really quickly so they can just get out of the store and did not really pay
attention to what they have got. Loud music volume violate consumer’s zone of tolerance
and result in a dissatisfactory experience, impedes their ability to efficiently shop and
decrease store stay time. Thus, a potential brand reinforcement occasion is lost. The ability
to experience the functional benefits of the brand and the servicescape are diminished.
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3.4 Other benefit of background music
Rather than to endure consumer as they ate, shopped or drank coffee, background music can
also increase a store’s income by making the possibility of selling a new product line. Today,
many upscale retail stores like Starbucks and Victoria’s Secret and Pottery Barn see background
music as profit center and a marketing tool. The retailers invest in original recordings and then
sell the music as a brand extension of their ambience. Some of coffee shops and retail store
started to sell their background music compilation. The idea is to bring home a part of the
atmosphere that attract consumer to the store. Since background music in a store does not
provide enough information about the song, it might be a great opportunity to provide the
whole bundle of the songs to consumers.
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4. Discussion
Those all findings lead to a conclusion that music is an important stimulus for marketers to
be consider about, especially knowing the fact that music is a controlled stimuli that carries
an affective reaction. To start up the discussion, highlighting some facts that have been
found by some researchers, Areni and Kim (1993) observed the usefulness of classical
music on the wine store. They found that by playing this kind of music, shoppers tend to
purchase more expensive wine. In the supermarket, consumer purchase more French wine
when French music is played and German wine when German music is played (North et al.,
1999). Florists also can use a romantic song to increase consumer’s money spending (Jacob
et al., 2009). In a candy store, when cartoon music is played, customer aged from 12 to 14 is
likely to spend more time in the store (Le Guellec et al., 2007).
This fact might be thought through a common sense that a related background sound and
an enjoyable song will make customer happy. But it does not really answer the scientific
question about what music can do that it is believed to influence customer’s decision in
store. Thus, I present three proposition suggested by past studies but warrant further
testing, particularly in marketing context.
𝑃1∶𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑠 𝑏𝑜𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠′ 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑
To see what music can do, I picked out two sides of view to make a fair conclusion about its
effect. Music flows both ways, inside and out of customer. Music works through the air
customers breathe and also works as the air that lingers around the customers. Meaning,
music carries messages that trigger some notion and will impact customers’ mood and
decision. It also provokes commercial environments that produce specific emotion effects
in the buyer that enhance their purchase intention.
CUSTOMER
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MUSIC
AMBIENCE
𝑃1𝑎∶𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑎𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠
There is a thing called “aesthetic appraisal of music” that is once believed related to
customers’ mood. But Kriss Goffin (2014) contented that the experience of mood consist of
different feelings and some of music is directed to music, and some are not. This feeling
Goffin talks about is vitality affects. It represents action in specific way, or the way Stern
(2010) like to say “represent dynamic experiences in some non-verbal kinesthetic and
bodily manner”. It is like how an infant responds to a spoon that reaches her mouth as her
father moves his arm. This interaction is not represented in thought, but is felt inside a
body though vitality affects.
Music is a dynamics of feeling and a symbolic representation of effective dynamics – Inner
life (Langer, 1957). It creates a pattern of motion and rest, tension and release, agreement
and disagreement, preparation, fulfillment excitation, sudden change and so on. Carroll
Pratt (1931) likes to call this dynamics as “merely sound the way moods feel”. It works just
like vitalit; the movement of the music will impact to the movement of the feeling
customers feel inside.
To be precise, music lacks of intentional object. It might cause by particular event, but not
directed to anything (Zangwill, 2004). It is more like a magic trick; when you listen to
Bethoveen’s Pathétique Sonata, it makes you feel blue. But, it is not the Sonata you’re being
blue for; it just
you feel so. Subliminal message contained in music might be the secret
behind this magic trick. Subliminal perception is characterized by perception without
awareness (Merikle, 2000). Stimuli below the listening threshold can result in physiological
reactions (1983); in this case, a mood the way music plays.
𝑃1𝑏∶𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑒𝑛𝑣𝑖𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑒 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
Many managers belief that music can really influence the way customer feels about the
environment of the store; it is one of the most important cues to set a store up. There are
time for upbeat songs, and time for slow tuned songs. Some managers are aware of the
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implication of each song types, and some play certain type of music at certain time because
it somehow feels right.
Repetition is an important thing to be considered about. It has negative effect to both
customers and employee. The effect works the same both with customers and employees. It
will make them both sick to hear the same song over and over again. But repetition is
worse for the employee. Since they work in the store at least 4 hours per day, once they feel
sick about the repetition of the song, their performance will decrease. The trick is not only
about the repetition within a play set, but also about how often a song being played in the
broadcasting channel. For example, there was one Philippine female singer named Sabrina
who plays acoustic guitar and covering lots of top chart song. And somehow, most of cafes
in Jogjakarta, Indonesia played Sabrina’s song when she was in the peak of her famous life.
And as I observe, some particular stores that always plays Sabrina all the time started to
become a talk; that people do not want to eat at that place because they just do not want to
hear Sabrina sings.
Particular genre and era also take a big part in determining the play list. This is related with
age segment. Teenagers will find it boring to listen to classical music in coffee shop, but
classical music will works well in a tea room, simply because tea room’s customers are
mostly older people. Background music is as well helps managers manage the noise in the
store. It helps customers focus more on their current activity rather than distracted to
anything around them. Blank background music can create an awkward situation.
Background music can help customer breaking the ice. It facilitate consumer to start a
conversation even though the talks is not about music, but it just somehow increase
customers’ degree of comfort and help them create the moment.
𝑃2∶𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑙𝑢𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑠′ 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑑
This proposition might be too wide, since there are a lot of music characteristic to discuss
about and state of minds created by it. But in this section, I will divide it in to three subpropositions as the focus of this research. This concept is addressed by five music
characters which are time, pitch, texture, objectivity and ground of the music.
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𝑃2𝑎∶𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
What it means by components of music is time, pitch and texture. Time is related to tempo
and rhythm. Pitch is the mode, the melody and the harmony of a song. A texture is more
likely to be the dynamic of the song as well as the played instrument. As a whole, the
components of music are capable of creating effect on moods, cognitions and behaviors of
interest in marketing. The emotions perceived to be expressed in musical stimuli are
capable of evoking corresponding affective reaction in listeners. There are dynamic forms
of expression specific to each emotion and the ability of a stimulus to evoke an emotion
depends heavily on the purity of the expression (Clynes 1977, 1982).
Related to the first proposition, influence of music on persuasiveness in greatest under
condition of peripheral route processing and low cognitive involvement. But in this case,
the overall case of this research, music itself is not to be the product or an integral part of it
as in records, concerts and plays. The respond will be different if music is part of the
product. Customer will represent high affective involvement and central route processing
because what they fell about the music would be the main evaluation (Caioppo and Petty
1989). This can be occurred if music makes mood more congruent thought more accessible
in memory (Gardner, 1985).
𝑃2𝑏∶𝑂𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡
Among the most important moderators to evaluate are the familiarity of the music to
listeners (Fontaine and Schwalm 1979; Hilliard and Tonlin 1979), music enjoyment (Gorn,
1982; Wheeler 1985) and prior mood (Eagle 1971; Goldberg and Gron 1987). It is an
important part to evaluate the response of the customers. Responses to music are not likely
to be determined solely by the learning environment or by human nature, but more
because of the interaction of both of it. Culture is one of the elements that form a similarity
between two persons. A greater understanding is needed of which structural elements we
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respond to similarly as a result of our nature and which one we respond to differently as a
result of learning.
Other than the cultural element, affection is also ado in determining the objectivity of the
music. There is a thing called affective quality of music which works differently in each
person. Customer will easily be adapt and responses and come to a certain agreement,
which created by the emotional quality of the song, and in the sense that the emotion go
along with the circumstance (Sparshott, 1994).
Personal preference will create a pleasant or unpleasant feeling. It will make customer stay
longer and led a positive attitude toward the brand.
North and Hargreaves (1996)
explored that a happy customer will be return to an environment, and desirable music
choices influence intentions to shop in particular store. But how we define what desirable
music is, since each person has their own preference and taste of music?
Music is more than just a tune; it also contains sound, style and sensibility. The sound itself
created a style that define how this particular sound feels like, and once people agree with
this particular style, they get attached and create a sentiment toward this sound. People
who agree with this will form subcultures who call themselves as the fans of particular
music and it sometimes cling to themselves; you can easily predict what kind of music one’s
listening to.
But there are not much research exploring about the use of personal preference on store
background music, because it’s too objective and too complicated yet unrealistic to define a
massive purpose. Top chart might be the simple answer of this black box since; the chart
itself voted by customer themselves. But specifically, there are some more things that can
help us define the objectivity more.
𝑃2𝑏∶𝐴𝑔𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑝𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑏𝑗𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡𝑦
Young people are likely to love foreground music better than background, while older
people like background music more than foreground. Background music is mostly only
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instrument playing at the back and foreground is music with lyrics. When shoppers were
exposed to music that they normally listen to, they tend to spend more time than they
usually do. It might be because while customers face a non typical environment, they pay
more attention to what is happening and their ability to recall more events result in their
perception of time as being greater than it actually was. In the opposite way familiar
environment makes customer care less about the surrounding and tend to make them
recall less of what happened and think that they have just spend a little time shopping.
Customer decision to increase or decrease the amount of time they shopped also depends
on type of music being played. It is because of the unanticipated change from the amount of
time they had planned or normally shop. When customers are in their leisure shopping
time, the more pleasant the song, it will increase their shopping time. But when customers
have a quick shop, pleasant background music is not really significantly influence the
shopping time.
𝑃3∶𝐴 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑑 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑢𝑙𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛
𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛
Pleasure and arousal resulted from music congruency bring a perception about
environment quality and service quality. Basically, we have to classify the types of the
stores before we go on with the theories that mentioned in the finding section. For
example, Ryu and Jang (2008) found that there is a positive relationship between arousal
and pleasure in an upscale restaurant, but for a fast-food restaurant, low level of arousal is
more favorable. This is related to the customers’ motivation orientation. People who go to
fast-food restaurant tend to have task-oriented motivation. They might have a little time to
eat or in the middle of something that they choose a rushing-kind of place to eat. Thus they
want to eat efficiently without expending much energy. In the other hand, people who go to
upscale restaurant are they with a recreational motivation. They expect to gain intrinsic
satisfaction from eating in that restaurant and having a good time.
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Music as the stimulus or the arousal will make this example sense. Pleasure mediates the
link between music congruency and cognitive responses. Music congruency directly
influences the perception of service quality while arousal and pleasure will endorse the
quality of the environment (Demoulin, 2011). In other words, type of a store could be
distinguish by the motivation of customers to come to that store, and by analyzing that, we
can propose what kind of arousal we are going to make. Arousal induced by music
congruency will lead to high pleasure levels.
Music genre and volume are also big hints to match the music background and the store
setting. The degree of it fitness will engage the cognitive and emotive process and leads to a
attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. Let us take the previous example about the wine store
and the classical music. This classic music works as a vehicle to reach a certain brand
positioning. It will be positioned as premium and authentic store. It also helps to create a
brand personality; for example, sophisticated. Furthermore, it will bring to a strong
customer-brand relationship, since customer feels bond. This good perception will increase
the consumer intention to come back and of course lead to a retention behavior.
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5. Conclusion and Recommendation
5.1 Conclusion
Music is proven as an important cue of subtle environmental to influence consumer
behavior, and the importance is determined by several factors. Yet, to conclude this
research paper, I will spell out the answer of the research question; “What are those
important factors to be consider about to build a play list for in-store background music?”
First of all, based on what expert said, expressiveness quality of the music is an important
factor to create mood. By it means, how a song could interfere to a certain cluster of feeling,
will dictate mood and will turn out to influence the customer mood in the store. Managers
choose to change the genre as the day progression change. Repetition of the play list
determines the saturation level of customers and, some specific genre create an anti social
behavior for certain customers.
Second, music characteristics contain meaningful cue to influence customer behavior.
Tempo has a strong correlation with feeling. Rhythm and phrasing are also included in the
term of tempo. Harmonic, dynamic and mode; or pitch is a factor that is related to the
expressiveness. And Texture of the song or the instrument of the song is also one of the
factors and also influence feeling. Happy music has a different response with sad music to
the customer behavior. As well as the objectiveness, disliked music leads to a negative
attitude toward the brand. Foreground and background music are needed to be distinguish
because different age and different shopping intention respond differently to this factor.
Last of all, Pleasure and arousal affect the consumer evaluation of the store. It is mediated
by a factor named music congruency. What it means by evaluation is the service quality
and environment quality. Customer satisfaction and retention is of course the goal of this
setting. Service setting and brand fit are the last factor mentioned in this research. The
service setting is mostly about the product sold in the store and the store image. How a
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brand wants to be perceived can also be set by the background music. It is a cue for
customers about the product range and the quality of the brand. Music volume is a
moderating factor of overall effect of music experience in a store. Right volume in right
time will help to build up the color of the store.
5.2 Recommendation
Type of product is the first important thing to be considered in building a good background
song list. Demographic factor of the customer is another great deal. Applying what have
been discovered through this research; adjusted tempo, pitch texture, expressiveness and
many other factors with those two basic things will generate a formulation if what song to
play in certain store.
Some recommendations, energetic mix of Pop, R&B, light Dance- Pop, Country Pop, Indie,
Rock, are suitable genres for stores, malls and restaurants. It is upbeat, fun and can be
accepted to all kinds of audience. Smooth Jazz, Acid Jazz, Easy-going, Pop, R&B, and Soft
Rock, are ideal for casual dining, furniture stores, bed and bath, grocery store since most of
the audience are shopping for leisure and mostly adult. Chill out, Bossa Nova, Traditional
Jazz, Nu-Jazz, Orchestral Jazz, and Contemporary Instrumentals plus light vocals are ideal
genres for luxury retail stores, hotels, banks and upscale shopping center, it drives a great
pleasure and leads to high arousal, and engage to a good customer-brand relation.
Great background music list can also be a business opportunity. Just like what have
happened with Starbucks, It could create a very nice ambience with its background music.
Customers have their own perception about Starbucks and engaged in a deep image. And
Starbucks makes a fortune out of it; it makes its own compilation album of their favorite
play list and sell it in the stores, so that customer can bring home not just the Starbucks, but
also a tip of the ambience of sipping a glass of coffee in the Starbucks.
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