The Impact Of Background Music On The Duration Of Consumer Stay At Stores

Keng-Lin, Jayaraman, Li-Peng, & Shayan (2015) set out to ascertain whether background music tempo has any effect on the length of time consumers stay at stores like supermarkets, florist shops, apparel stores, book shops and restaurants. For this study, they randomly emailed 500 Malaysians in a bid to test the following hypotheses.

H1: Background music tempo has a positive influence on the pleasure of the consumers.

H2: Background music tempo has a positive influence on arousal of the consumers.

H3: Background music tempo has a positive influence on duration of consumers’ stay in a shop.

H4: Pleasure and arousal emerging from background music tempo have a positive relationship on the duration of consumers’ stay in shops.

Of the 500 questionnaires sent out, half were for fast tempo and the other half for slow tempo. 117 people responded with 55% listening to and contributing data for fast tempo and the rest for slow tempo. All respondents were between 22 and 57 years inclusive and at least had a secondary school education. Based on their findings, they accepted all four hypotheses but remarked that H3 and H4 are particular to supermarkets and restaurants. With a 5 percent significance level, respondents said they would stay longer at a supermarket or restaurant if the background music had a slow tempo.

Another pair of researchers, Garlin & Owen (2006), reviewed existing literature covering the influence of background music on customers. The literature reviewed included research on music and its effect on waiting time, customer perception of time, customer preference, duration in an establishment, spending, etc. Based on results from other researchers, they then conducted a meta-critical study to determine if music actually had any impact or value in the retail context and if there were any financial advantages to using it. After analyzing 148 data points from 32 studies, they came to the following interesting conclusions.

• “Familiarity/liking has a positive effect on patronage;
• The mere presence of music has a positive effect on patronage as well as felt pleasure;
• Slower tempo, lower volume and familiar music results in subjects staying marginally longer at a venue than when the tempo or volume are high, or the music less familiar;
• A higher volume and tempo, and the less liked the music, the longer customers perceive time duration. This has most implications for waiting customers.
• Tempo has the greatest effect on arousal. ”

This research is the most robust of all others mentioned because it reassesses the data and results presented by 32 other studies, a couple of which are listed above. The researchers exclude some other studies because of issues like the lack of a control group, unusable statistics, unbalanced design, etc. Therefore, their research invariably presents a wholistic view of the impact music can have in a retail business like a restaurant.