Literature Review On The Influence Of Background Music On The Behavior Of Restaurant Patrons
Introduction
Music, for players in the service industry, has become an important factor in the race for customer attention and retention. It is now a principal tool in the creation of an all-round customer experience, vying for supremacy with other factors that influence customer decisions like lighting, layout, scent, etc. In fact, music is so important to business owners and consumers alike that Heartbeats International, “a brand and communications agency, specialized in music and pop culture”, conducted a survey on music’s impact in public spaces. In the survey of 1000 Swedes, 16-64 years, 35 percent of participants admitted they would stay longer at a public place if music they know or appreciate what music played in the background. Fourteen percent insisted they would spend more money in such places while 21 percent said they were likely to recommend the place to others.
As far back as the 70s, experts had begun to conduct research on the importance of music as a tool for marketing. Majority of this research at the time focused on the retail setting, and they concluded that choice of music and its tempo had some kind of effect on customers’ buying behavior. Milliman (1982) conducted a study on how the tempo of music in a medium-sized supermarket in southwestern U. S. affected the flow of in-store traffic. Interestingly, his research which focused on three variables — no music, slow-paced music and fast-paced music, showed that when the tempo of music was slow, customer traffic was even slower than when there was no music at all. Additionally, the store had higher sales in periods when slow-paced music was played in comparison to no music and fast-paced music. Jain & Bagdare (2011) reviewed the relationship between consumer experience and musical factors in retail. Their research attempted to relate cognitive and behavioral responses to music with factors like pitch, tempo and type of music. In their own words, music “is a powerful invisible force that surrounds shoppers even if they do not pay deliberate attention, it interacts with them effortlessly. ” Music does affect humans on a subconscious level and can determine actions, choices, and thoughts. Those businesses that find the right balance between this all-important factor and consumer perception can dominate their industry.
Ron Milliman is an expert in marketing and business, but he has also studied subjects like psychology, economics and sociology. He wrote this paper as a natural extension of his 1982 article that examined how music could affect the behavior of shoppers at a supermarket. In this paper, he conducts a controlled experiment of the effects of music tempo on the behavior of customers at a restaurant. He modeled his study on the Mehrabian and Russell (1974) experiment which attempted an explanation of human behavior based on environmental atmosphere.
Milliman (1986) conducted this study in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas at a high “quality, attractively decorated, above-average-priced” restaurant mostly frequented by people who earn a high income and are middle-aged. As part of the parameters necessary for the experiment, he had to define what was fast or slow music, and after a pre-survey of the restaurant patrons, settled on 72 bpm as slow-paced music and 92 bpm as fast-paced music. The actual experiment took place over 8 consecutive weekends — Friday and Saturday, starting in September. It involved 1392 customer groups observed for 2 hours, 7 pm – 9 pm. He varied the music tempo over 8 days. After randomly assigning a music tempo to the first Friday of the study, the choice was then alternated on subsequent days and weekends. He also observed variables like how quickly customers were served once they were seated, how often they left the restaurant before being seated, and how much more above average was spent on food when fast or slow tempo music was played. However, his results on these three variables were insignificant.
Since diners spent more time eating, they elongated waiting times when music with a slow tempo was played than when it was fast paced. The direct effect of longer dining times was the increased amount of money spent on drinks. In spite of the scope of this experiment, one might argue that the average human’s perception of tempo has changed since 1986 and that such perceptions are invariably based on the age of the person. There is also the question of whether these results will prove true at a mid-priced restaurant in California or Hawaii. Having said that, his was one of the first robust experiments that dealt with music tempo and diners’ behavior and he not only paved the way for further research but also created a subject terms repertoire which other researchers have since used.
Caldwell and Hibbert (2002), both researchers at the University of Strathclyde at the time of their article, examined the effects of music tempo and music preference on the amount of time and money customers spent in restaurants, as well as their satisfaction and intentions going forward. Their research was set up to test the correctness of Milliman’s study presented above and that of another researcher, Herrington (1996). Herrington set out to examine customer behavior in supermarkets in relation to music preference, tempo, and volume. His research showed partiality to certain music influenced customers to act in certain ways.
They conducted their experiment at an Italian restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland, using the same definitions of fast and slow tempo as defined by Milliman’s (1986) study. They controlled the volume of the music, and the temperature and lighting of the restaurant but conducted their study between 7 pm and 10 pm on Thursdays and Sundays. Another difference between their setting and Milliman’s (1986) is that at the time, the restaurant did not take reservations, so there was no pressure on the guests to relinquish a table by a certain time. They used questionnaires and observations to gather data and sampled 62 patrons. Their results showed that on average, patrons spent more time dining when slow tempo music was playing and when there was a preference for the music. Their calculations did however find that slow music tempo did not account for increased spending; instead attributing spending to longer dining times.
As the writers admit, there are some limitations to this study, not least of which is the small sample size; the smaller the sample, the more skewed results can appear. In addition, the researchers did not vary the definitions of music pace neither did they account for the ages of their respondents.
The author, Fikret Akin, submitted this paper as part of the fulfillment of a masters’ degree in marketing communication. Since the thesis involves a slightly different study from those already presented, it may create a balance between all selected literature.
Akin (2013) observed 305 diners at a Greek restaurant in Steenwijk, Netherlands, over one month, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Employing the use of questionnaires and observation for data gathering, he measured the interaction between music tempo, occupancy rate and customer behavior (i. e. time and money spent and alcohol consumption). To reduce errors and bias, throughout the experiment, the volume and genre of the music were controlled, and he only used Greek music, the kind of music the restaurant usually played. Additionally, the temperature and lighting of the room was regularized.
Specifically, he discovered that when the rate of occupancy at the restaurant was high, “participants in the fast music condition consumed more alcohol, stayed longer and spen[t] more money in the restaurant”. Although he also maintained Milliman’s (1986) definitions of tempo, his findings appear to indicate that restaurant patrons are willing to spend more and stay longer when there are more people in the same space and when fast-paced music is playing. Still his research was conducted over a summer period, with the possibility there were more tourists than regular patrons. The fact that the study was conducted in a city with a “small-town feel” might also have contributed to the nature of the results. Yet, his study involves more participants than that of Caldwell and Hibbert (2002) and the results do throw light on another dimension to customer behavior in restaurants.
Majority of the research highlighted here reveals that music tempo affects total spend (time and money) in a restaurant; however, they posit that spend to be more on drinks. For this reason, it is important to review the extent of this possibility; this master’s thesis by Samuel Joseph Down can provide added perspective. Down (2009) studied customer behavior to ascertain whether the tempo of background music had any effect on the time and money spent at a bar. He unobtrusively observed 187 customers in the smoking section of a café in Jyvaskyla, Finland, every evening, Mon – Fri for 10 days in February starting on the 16th day of the month and ending in March. To balance out his experiment, he collected data in the months prior to the start of the study. He also set a range for slow tempo music, 34 – 60 bpm and fast tempo, 147 – 222 bpm. In order not to affect the results in any way, he chose observation days which would not have direct influence from external factors, like weekends, paydays, etc. He also performed his experiments at specific times and excluded all customers who were already at the venue before the observation began. His results revealed:
- Music tempo, fast or slow, did not affect the length of time customers spent in the bar.
- Customer spending on days when slow-paced music played was higher than when fast-paced music was played.
- A likelihood that the effect fast-paced music had on decreasing spending was greater than the opposite effect slow-paced music had on increasing spending. His findings would seem to be in line with Milliman’s (1986), albeit loosely. However, as this research was carried out in a bar, the explanation that people spent more on drinks because of a longer table waiting period when the music tempo was slower cannot be applied to it. One more thing to be considered is the fact that the researcher relied on his cognitive ability to recognize new customers as different from those whom he had already started observing.
Up to this point, researchers’ findings on whether music tempo has any effect on customer behavior are not aligned. This raises the question, is it possible that the influencing factor is not the tempo but the kind of music, customers’ perceptions, kind of restaurant, etc. or a combination of some? HUI Research (Swedish Institute of Retail) in collaboration with Soundtrack Your Brand delved into the way music that fit a particular brand could affect customer behavior. In their words, they tested “how music that matches a brand influences sales, emotions, and guest experience”. This was one of the biggest field studies involving music and restaurants as it covered 16 chain restaurants in the Stockholm metropolitan area over the space of 20 weeks. For the experiment, the researchers used Soundtrack Your Brand's streaming solution that allowed them to preselect and play music across all 16 locations. To this effect, they selected brand-fitting music regardless of its popularity. They defined brand-fit music as “music that ‘feels’ like the brand”.
Of the 16 restaurants, 8 of them were controlled such that only music that fit the brand were played, irrespective of whether they were well known or not. At the other eight, they made playlists that included well-known and lesser known brand-fit music, no music at all and/or other randomly selected songs on Spotify’s top 1000 Sweden list.
After reviewing about two million transactions and over 2, 000 surveys, they found that brand-fitting music makes customers 15. 6 percent more likely to buy additional items. Also, in comparison to playing randomly selected songs as all previously mentioned researchers, brand-fit songs increased sales by 9. 1 percent. In considering whether to increase music tempo for increased sales, 1149 cannot ignore the findings of this research. Its sheer size alone could mean that the results are more reflective of the fact.
Conclusion
While many researchers cling to different point on the spectrum, a few of them advocate for the return of silence, i. e. dining experiences enjoyed without the “interference” of deliberate sound. In the Flavor Journal, Spence (2014) studied the interaction between noises and the consumer’s perception of food and drink; concluding that loud music adversely affects “the taste, flavour, and texture of food”. The results of the study conducted by Heartbeats International support this theory because 87 percent of participants said it is important that the music played in restaurants has the right volume; however, another 41 percent said they would react negatively to no music. There is only so much food any particular individual will eat; and while we may have a different relationship with food when we are alone, eating in public means being considerate of other people’s sensibilities.
