Music and consumers - Kellaris (2008) - Article

Music can influence consumers. Music is often used in on radio, television and internet advertisement. Music is also used in telephone conversations when you have to wait but it is also a form of consumption itself. People buy CD’s or download songs and music is used in sporting events or ceremonial events. It seems that music has a rich context and it can give us information about auditory perception, attitude, emotion and memory recall. However, it is difficult to study music-related issues. One of the reasons for this, is because music research in consumer psychology is not about music per se, but is about musical stimuli in experimental investigations of other things. So it is difficult to classify music research in consumer psychology. Another problem about music and consumer research is that the research is conducted in another discipline and then applied to consumer psychology. However, it is difficult to know whether research in another discipline can be applied to consumer topics. A third problem for music and consumer research is that consumer research treats music as an independent variable, but research focuses on outcomes of interests. Another problem for this type of research is that there is not a definition for music. What is music? In research music can be background sound, instrumental music, vocal music and many more. Normative, gain, and hedonic goal

Music in the ancient world was seen as closely related to philosophy, cosmology, metaphysics and mathematics. Modern scientific investigation of music focused on the effect of speed and pitch on subjective reactions. Later on, the idea was developed that musical preference and personality correlate. Musical preference can be used to convey information about people and to form impressions of others. Scientists also found that music can increase the productivity in the workplace. During the second half of the 20^th century, musical influence on consumers increased because of the new media and popular culture.

Key literature

There are three articles that are important in the literature on music and consumption. In the next section these three articles will be discussed. Bruner studied the influence of music on consumer’s emotional and behavioural responses in commercial contexts. He found that time (tempo and rhythm), pitch (melody and harmony) and texture (tone and volume) may be of influence on reactions. He showed that certain properties of music can evoke certain effects. One example is that fast music evokes arousement. Bruner was of big importance for the research on music, because he showed that music evokes feelings and meanings and studies didn’t look anymore at the presence versus the absence of music because Bruner already showed what impact music can have. The work of Bruner, however, did not focus on other aspects of music. His work only looked at music and affect but music can also have cognitive outcomes. Also, his work didn’t look at the interaction between music and individual’s characteristics. Maybe one person can be affected by the music of Beethoven, but another person will not be affected by this music. The effects of music depend on traits of the music and on individual traits.

The second article is of Hargreaves and North. They also found many influences of music on consumers. Some of their studies were about music in advertisement, entertainment and retail shops. They showed that music in advertisement can elicit certain feelings and that listeners will associate these feelings with the advertised product. Their research also showed that the loudness and speed of music in stores can influence the pace of store traffic and the duration people stay in the store. Also, their research showed that music influences perception of time. Some critical points can be made on their research. One is that their research does not investigate alternative explanations. Some researchers think that it was not the music per se that influenced people, but the lyrics.

The third article is that of Turley and Milliman. They also looked at the effects of environmental music on shoppers. The current article doesn’t tell much about the research of Turley and Milliman. It only tells that they advice researchers to look at atmospheric music and that this is really hard to do. When you really want to measure the influence of music, you must get inside the head of shoppers and not only look at the time they spend shopping.

Recent work on music

Work since 1990 has shown that music shapes affective states of consumers in commercial contexts and that it can be used as a mood inductor in experimental research. Music can elicit feelings of pleasure, sadness, happiness, anger and fear. It can help you relax, influence cognitive activity and produce positive evaluations. One study showed that evoking enthusiasm during a positive message can make you feel more positive about the message than before and effect desirable outcomes. Evoking feelings of fear increases the negative thoughts about the message. This study was done during a democratic campaign and it shows that music can influence important things, such as democratic processes during campaign ads. There are some things that should also be studied. If positive music makes people happy and enthusiastic, then why do some individuals listen to sad music? Future research should look at this. Another thing that should be studied is the distinction between consumers’ affective reactions to music (music makes you feel happy) and consumers’ judgments of music’s affective character (the music sounds happy). Music that is experienced as being happy in character does not necessarily make people feel happy.

Research also found that there is a link between music and recall. Sung messages (rather than spoken messages) may improve recall of advertisements under certain conditions. Research found that music that ads with specially made music was better remembered than ads with already known music. But current trends in advertisement is to use popular music. Research has shown that people can recall things better when instrumental rather than vocal versions of popular hits are used. This is because instrumental music may encourage people to sing along mentally. When the lyrics in an ad campaign convey the message, it is more easily to remember. When the goal is not recall but persuasion, popular hits draw attention and thus encourage a less critical mind-set. Music does not only draw attention, it can also reduce intention. One study found that music can disrupt recall, but when the music stops and there is a silence before an important message, that message is remembered better.

Research has also focused on music and time duration. In general it seems that when less arousing music is heard intervals seem longer. Music that is not really familiar does not reduce perceived time. Not many studies have looked at the link between music speed and the speed in waiting lines. This is something that has to be done. When the cognitive load is not high, the perceived duration time is perceived as shorter. The type of music may also have an effect on perceived time. Research found that relaxing music, makes people perceive the time longer than it was and that ‘wild’ music, like jazz, made people feel that the time was shorter than it was.

Music may also have effects on behaviour. One study found that people were willing to wait longer while listening to music. Music that was liked especially had this effect. Preferred music also let people stay longer in restaurants. Because of the nice music people sat longer under the illusion that their stay was shorter. Restaurant visits were longer when the music was popular and on a low volume. Another study found that the sale of French wine increased when French music was playing in the background and the sale of German wine increased when German music was playing in the background. Fast music also results in a faster pace of drinking.

The ear worm phenomenon is that a song gets stuck in the head without hearing the song from an external source. Whether you like the song or not, you will keep hearing it in your head. Just like some physical properties can make the skin itch, certain properties of songs may itch the brain and cause the repetition of the song in your head. Researchers have also looked at the link between ear worms and personality traits, but have not found a real link. One thing that was found, however, was that the frequency of ear worm episodes were associated with neuroticism. People who have a low need for cognition are prone to longer ear worm episodes. Music that is simplistic, repetitive and has incongruous features is most likely to become an ear worm.

The theory of ironic processes of mental control may also help explain the ear worm effect. This theory thinks that there are two processes that involve mental control. The first one is an operating process and this process looks for mental contests consistent with one’s goal (not thinking of a particular tone) and the second is a monitoring process that looks at inconsistencies with one’s goals (how frequently you think about a song you’re not supposed to think of). The first process can be influenced by cognitive load and when the cognitive load is high, it is difficult to not think of a song.