تاثیر مناسبت خرید بر نقش موسیقی در تبلیغات

The role of background music in audience responses to commercials (and other marketing elements) has received increasing attention in recent years. This article extends the discussion of music's influence in two ways: (1) by using music theory to analyze and investigate the effects of music's structural profiles on consumers' moods and emotions and (2) by examining the relationship between music's evoked moods that are congruent versus incongruent with the purchase occasion and the resulting effect on purchase intentions. The study reported provides empirical support for the notion that when music is used to evoke emotions congruent with the symbolic meaning of product purchase, the likelihood of purchasing is enhanced.

How does the perceived purchase situation affect the impact of music in advertising on consumers' moods, attitudes, and behaviors? This issue is motivated by the increased interest in emotional advertising and the complex roles that music assumes within it. For many marketing communication settings, the amount of objective information-processing activity is minimal, and there is substantial evidence that affective information processing may be instrumental in forming (or reinforcing) preferences and choices. Music has been used in stores, offices, and as a background in advertisements and has been reported to influence listeners' emotions and behaviors. Music is a very useful tool for persuasion and exploring just how and why this is so is an important area for research. This article discusses, integrates, and builds upon the work of Gorn (1982) and others (e.g., Bruner, 1990) who provide theoretical and empirical insight into the ways in which music may influence consumer responses. To that end, we present an investigation into the effect of congruity and incongruity between affect or “mood” evoked by music imbedded in an advertisement and affect consistent with the symbolic meaning of the purchase itself. Implications for marketing theory and strategy will be discussed.

The results of this study support the hypothesis that variations in the formal music structure of background music in commercials may have significant influence over the emotional responses of an audience. Prior research in consumer behavior had shown that varying specific background music selections along dimensions of familiarity and liking could affect responses to “advertised” products. The present article extends the discussion concerning the effect of musical content that may lead to emotional and affective responses among consumers. It does so by determining whether congruity between musical advertisement “messages” and nonmusical variables that are part of the communications context but outside the advertisement itself (e.g., occasion) increases or blocks affect and behavior. Different profiles of musical structural elements of modality, tempo, dynamics, and rhythm may, all things being equal, lead to a perception of happy or sad musical content. In this study, equally liked musical backgrounds that differed in their profile of these structural elements were shown to affect audience moods in directions predictable from analysis of the musical structure, confirming earlier research by Hevner (1935) and Alpert and Alpert (1990). This finding has direct relevance to those interested in the impact on mood from factors such as the structural elements in background music. It was noted earlier that simultaneous variation of the entire profile of elements (major/minor, tempo, rhythm, and volume) precludes inferences from this study regarding their relative influence on moods and other dependent variables of interest. Other research suggests the dominance of major versus minor melodies (influencing moods to be happy versus sad), all else equal. To test the possibility that other factors might confound the study (Kellaris and Kent, 1993), a second factor of affective responses corresponding to “arousal” was extracted and found to vary in a manner consistent with the fast/slow tempi of the musical excerpts in the treatments. However, individual-level regression analyses showed that the feelings dimension “happy/sad” was correlated with buying intentions while feelings of arousal/nonarousal were not. More important, having found that musical structure does make a difference to moods and behavioral intentions towards products “shaded” with music, it may be appropriate to extend the present work with carefully controlled manipulations of specific structural elements of music. To this end, the methodologies employed by Holbrook and Huber (1979) and Kellaris and Kent (1993) may be productively used.