Music is an increasingly prominent and expensive feature of broadcast ads, yet its effects on message reception are controversial. The authors propose and test a contingency that may help resolve this controversy. Experimental results suggest that message reception is influenced by the interplay of two musical properties: attention-gaining value and music-message congruency. Increasing audience attention to music enhances message reception when the music evokes message-congruent (versus incongruent) thoughts.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AaronCharles (1987), “Music in Advertising,” Adweek (September 14), F.P. 21.
2.
AlpertJudy I. and AlpertMark I. (1990), “Music Influences on Mood and Purchase Intentions,” Psychology and Marketing, 7 (2), 109–33.
3.
AlsopRonald (1985), “Ad Agencies Jazz Up Jingles by Playing on 1960's Nostalgia,” Wall Street Journal (April 18), B1.
4.
AnandPunam and SternthalBrian (1990), “Ease of Message Processing as a Moderator of Repetition Effects in Advertising,” Journal of Marketing Research, 27 (August), 345–53.
5.
BelshamRichard Lee and HarmanDavid W. (1977), “Effect of Vocal vs. Nonvocal Music on Visual Recall,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 44, 857–8.
6.
BerlyneD. E. (1974), Studies in the New Experimental Aesthetics. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishing.
7.
BettmanJames R. and Whan ParkC. (1980), “Effects of Prior Knowledge and Experience and Phase of the Choice Process on Consumer Decision Processes: A Protocol Analysis,” Journal of Consumer Research, 7 (December), 234–48.
8.
BoltzMarilyn, SchulkindMatthew, and KantraSuzanne (1991), “Effects of Background Music on the Remembering of Filmed Events,” Memory and Cognition, 19 (6), 593–606.
9.
BoxG. E. P. and AndersonS. L. (1955), “Permutation Theory in the Derivation of Robust Criteria and the Study of Departure from Assumptions,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 17, 1–34.
10.
BrunerGordon C.II (1990), “Music, Mood, and Marketing,” Journal of Marketing, 54 (October), 94–104.
11.
ChildersTerry L. and HoustonMichael J. (1984), “Conditions for a Picture-Superiority Effect on Consumer Memory,” Journal of Consumer Research, 11 (September), 643–54.
12.
CocksJay (1987), “Wanna Buy a Revolution?” Time (May 18), 78.
13.
CookThomas and CampbellDonald (1979), Quasi-Experimentation: Design and Analysis Issues for Field Settings. Chicago: Rand McNally.
14.
EnricoRoger and KornbluthJesse (1986), The Other Guy Blinked—How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars. New York: Bantam Books.
15.
GalizioMark and HendrickClyde (1972), “Effect of Musical Accompaniment on Attitude: The Guitar as a Prop for Persuasion,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 2 (4), 350–59.
16.
GardnerMeryl Paula (1985), “Mood States and Consumer Behavior: A Critical Review,” Journal of Consumer Research, 12 (December), 281–300.
17.
GarfieldBob (1988), “Too Much Ad Music Leaves Little Room for Hitting the Right Note,” Advertising Age (January 4), 46.
18.
GornGerald J. (1982), “The Effects of Music in Advertising on Choice Behavior: A Classical Conditioning Approach,” Journal of Marketing, 46 (Winter), 94–101.
19.
GundlachRalph H. (1935), “Factors Determining the Characterization of Musical Phrases,” American Journal of Psychology, 47 (October), 624–43.
20.
GurneyEdmund (1880), The Power of Sound. London: Smith, Elder, and Company.
21.
HairJoseph F.Jr., AndersonRolph E., and TathamRonald L. (1987), Multivariate Data Analysis, 2nd ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
22.
HaleyRussell I., RichardsonJack, and BaldwinBeth M. (1984), “The Effects of Nonverbal Communications in Television Advertising,” Journal of Advertising Research, 24 (4), 11–18.
23.
HastieReid and Anand KumarPurohit (1979), “Person Memory: Personality Traits as Organizing Principles in Memory for Behaviors,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37 (1), 25–38.
24.
HeckerSidney (1984), “Music for Advertising Effect,” Psychology and Marketing, 1 (Fall/Winter), 3–8.
25.
HecklerSusan E. and ChildersTerry L. (1992), “The Role of Expectancy and Relevancy in Memory for Verbal and Visual Information: What Is Incongruency?” Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (4), 475–92.
26.
HeeterCarrie and GreenbergBradley S. (1985), “Profiling the Zappers,” Journal of Advertising Research, 25 (April/May), 15–19.
27.
HettingerHerman S. (1933), A Decade of Radio Advertising. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
HolbrookMorris B. and BertgesStephen A. (1981), “Perceptual Veridicality in Esthetic Communication,” Communication Research, 8 (October), 387–424.
29.
HoustonMichael J., ChildersTerry L., and HecklerSusan E. (1987), “Picture-Word Consistency and the Elaborative Processing of Advertisments,” Journal of Marketing Research, 24 (November), 359–69.
30.
HoyerWayne D., SrivastavaR. K., and JacobyJacob (1984), “Sources of Miscomprehension in Television Advertising,” Journal of Advertising, 13 (2), 17–26.
31.
KarmenSteve (1989), Through the Jingle Jungle. New York: Billboard Books.
32.
KellarisJames J. and KentRobert J. (1991), “Exploring Tempo and Modality Effects on Consumer Responses to Music,” in Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 18, HolmanR. H. and SolomonM. R., eds. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 243–8.
33.
KeppelGeoffrey (1982), Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
34.
Kroeber-RielWerner (1979), “Activation Research: Psychobiological Approaches in Consumer Research,” Journal of Consumer Research5 (March), 240–50.
35.
KrugmanHerbert E. (1988), “Limits to the Attention of Advertising,” Journal of Advertising Research, 28 (5), 47–50.
36.
LindmanHarold R. (1974), Analysis of Variance in Complex Experimental Designs. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Company.
37.
LipmanJoanne (1991), “MTV Style, the Rage of the '80s, Falls From Favor at Many Shops,” Wall Street Journal (February 12), p. B6.
38.
LutzKathy A. and LutzRichard J. (1977), “Effects of Interactive Imagery on Learning: Applications to Advertising,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 62 (4), 493–98.
39.
LutzRichard (1985), “Affective and Cognitive Antecedents of Attitude Toward the Ad: A Conceptual Framework,” in Psychological Processes and Advertising Effects, AlwittL. and MitchellA., eds. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
40.
MacInnisDeborah J. and Whan ParkC. (1991), “The Differential Role of Characteristics of Music on High and Low Involvement Consumers' Processing of Ads,” Journal of Consumer Research, 18 (September), 161–73.
41.
MacKenzieScott B., LutzRichard J., and BelchGeorge E. (1986), “The Role of Attitude Toward the Ad as a Mediator of Advertising Effectiveness: A Test of Competing Explanations,” Journal of Marketing Research, 23 (May), 130–43.
42.
MacklinM. Carole (1988), “The Relationship Between Music in Advertising and Childrens' Responses: An Experimental Investigation,” in Nonverbal Communication in Advertising, HeckerS. and StewartD. W., eds. Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 225–52.
43.
MaddenThomas J., AllenChris T., and TwibleJacquelyn L. (1988), “Attitude Toward the Ad: An Assessment of Diverse Measurement Indices Under Different Processing ‘Sets,’” Journal of Marketing Research, 25 (3), 242–52.
44.
MeyerLeonard B. (1956), Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
45.
MichlinSpencer (1984), “When to Play It Again,” Television/Radio Age, July23, 66.
46.
MRI (1989), Multimedia Audiences Report, M3. New York: Mediamark Research, Inc. (Spring), 11.
47.
OlneyThomas J., HolbrookMorris B. and BatraRajeev (1991), “Consumer Responses to Advertising: The Effects of Ad Content, Emotions, and Attitude Toward the Ad on Viewing Time,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (March), 440–53.
48.
PerdueBarbara C., and SummersJohn O. (1986), “Checking the Success of Manipulations in Marketing Experiments,” Journal of Marketing Research, 23 (November), 317–26.
49.
RiggMelvin G. (1937), “An Experiment to Determine How Accurately College Students Can Interpret Intended Meanings of Musical Compositions,” Journal of Experimental Psychology, 21, 223–9.
50.
ScottLinda M. (1990), “Understanding Jingles and Needledrop: A Rhetorical Approach to Music in Advertising,” Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (September), 223–36.
51.
SewallMurphy A. and SarelDan (1986), “Characteristics of Radio Commercials and Their Recall Effectiveness,” Journal of Marketing, 50 (January), 52–60.
52.
SinghSurendra N., RothschildMichael L. and ChurchillGilbert A.Jr. (1988), “Recognition Versus Recall as Measures of Television Commercial Forgetting,” Journal of Marketing Research, 25 (February), 72–80.
53.
SrullThomas K., LichtensteinMeryl, and RothbartMyron (1985), “Associative Storage and Retrieval Processes in Person Memory,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11 (2), 316–45.
54.
StewartDavid W. and FurseDavid H. (1986), Effective Television Advertising—A Study of 1000 Commercials. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co.
55.
StewartDavid W., and KozakR. P. (1983), “A Guide to Copy-Testing Services,” Current Issues and Research in Advertising, 1, 1–44.
56.
TharpPaul (1989), “To Sing's the Thing, In Jingles,” New York Post (April 11).
57.
TomGail (1990), “Marketing with Music,” Journal of Consumer Marketing, 7 (Spring), 49–53.
58.
ToveyDonald Francis (1937), Essays in Musical Analysis. London: Oxford University Press.
59.
UnnavaH. Rao and BurnkrantRobert E. (1991), “An Imagery-Processing View of the Role of Pictures in Print Advertisements,” Journal of Marketing Research, 28 (2), 226–31.
60.
WakshlagJacob J., ReitzRaymond J., and ZillmanDolf (1982), “Selective Exposure and Acquisition of Information from Educational Television Programs as a Function of Appeal and Tempo of Background Music,” Journal of Educational Psychology, 74 (5), 666–77.
61.
WalkerDavid and von GontenMichael F. (1989), “Explaining Related Recall Outcomes: New Answers From A Better Model,” Journal of Advertising Research, 29 (June/July), 11–21.
62.
WallaceWanda T. (1991), “Jingles in Advertisements: Can They Improve Recall?” in Advances in Consumer Research, vol. 18, HolmanR. H. and SolomonM. R., eds. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 239–42.
63.
WatsonK. Brantley (1942), “The Nature and Measurement of Musical Meanings,” Psychological Monographs, 54 (2), 1–48.
64.
WebbPeter H. and RayMichael L. (1979), “Effects of TV Clutter,” Journal of Advertising Research, 19 (June), 7–12.
65.
WellsWilliam D. (1964), “Recognition, Recall and Rating Scales,” Journal of Advertising Research, 4 (3), 2–8.
66.
YorkeDavid A. and KitchenPhilip J. (1985), “Channel Flickers and Video Speeders,” Journal of Advertising Research, 25 (April/May), 21–25.
