BMT- 5225 CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR- J COMPONENT

A Project Report on
THE EFFECT OF MUSIC ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR IN A RESTAURANT

Submitted To
Dr. UMA PRICILLDA
Associate Professor –
VITBS

Submitted By
MUTHU KUMAR
17MBA0109

MAY 2019
 ABSTRACT

This project reports research into the effect of music and the music tempo on the behaviour of consumers
in a restaurant. A field experiment(survey) involving consumers eating at a restaurant was done to
investigate the extent to which music influences the mood of the customer, the regularity of the customer
visiting the restaurant and the type of music that the customer prefers while having his food. The results
show that the majority of the customers like listening to music while eating (preferably slow music) and
that they would spend more time at the restaurant if some background music was being played. There
was also some evidence that listening to music made the food taste more delicious, but not to a significant
level. The report also finds out the relation between the age of the customer and the type of music the
customer prefers while eating at the restaurant and how the age of the customer is related to the change in
behaviour of the customer while eating at the restaurant with the music being played. Finally, the music
did affect the moods of the customer but was found not to be an absolute neccesity provided the food
served was still delicious.
 CONTENTS

CHAPTER NUMBER CHAPTER PAGE

1 INTRODUCTION 1
2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 1
3 METHODOLOGY 3
4 DATA COLLECTION
AND ANALYSIS 3
5 MAJOR FINDINGS 7
6 CONCLUSION 7
7 REFERENCES 8
INTRODUCTION

A lot of interest is being shown by service providers in atmospherics in order to enhance the appeal of
service environments and to influence the behaviour of the consumer in service settings. There has been a
lot of growth in this particular area following Kotler’s article in 1973 which emphasised the importance
of atmospherics in the marketing field and also since Donovan and Rossiter’s application of Mehrabian in
1982 and Russel’s model of environmental psychology to the retail context in 1974.

The research that we have done focuses on music as an element of the service environment.
Understanding of the effects of music is very useful particularly to service managers as this element
is relatively inexpensive and is also easy to control. Specifically, the research done examines the
types of music and the effect of music tempo on the consumers in a restaurant.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The following study both synthesizes and builds on the efforts to conceptualize the effects of music on
the consumer’s behavioural intentions. Specifically, it reports an empirical assessment of a model of
service encounters that simultaneously considers the direct effects of these variables on behavioral
intentions. The study builds on recent advances in services marketing theory which identifies music as an
important factor which influences the behaviour of a consumer at a restaurant. Several competing theories
are also considered and compared to the research model. A number of notable findings are reported
including the empirical verification that service quality, service value, and satisfaction may all be directly
related to behavioral intentions when all of these variables are considered collectively. This paper
presents a conceptual framework that integrates the major determinants of consumer reactions to factors
other than the basic services provided (the factor in this case being music). The theoretical relationships
provide explanations for the marked differences in the effect of music observed in previous studies.
Moreover, the framework can be empirically implemented, allowing restaurant owners or managers to
determine how much music contributes to the growth of their business. We collected survey data to
provide evidence on the relevance of the framework and the direction and importance of the effect of
music on different consumer behaviours. The atmospheric influence in marketing contexts is simply
based on the premise that the desugn of the environment through a variety of means such as layout,
colours, lighting, temperature and sound could stimulate emotional responses in consumers and affect
their behaviour. The notion that background music can be used to influence consumer behavior is derived
from the concept of atmospherics. In certain shopping situations the atmosphere may be more influential
than the product itself in the purchase decision and can directly influence consumer behavior and attitude/
image formation. The physical surroundings (atmosphere) of services businesses have a large impact
because patrons frequently consume services within the firm's environment. Background music is
generally considered to be one of several atmospheric variables that can influence evaluations,
willingness to buy, mood, cognition, and behaviour. A review of the literature dealing with the effects of
background music on consumer behavior reveals several interesting
findings. First, background music influences the consumer’s evaluations of the restaurant and the eating
experience. Consumers like hearing music when they eat, and feel that restaurants providing background
music care about their customers. Background music can influence certain overt in-store behavior too.
Several field studies report that the dining pace, and in some instances expenditures, are influenced by the
volume and tempo of background music. Slower tempos and lower volumes tend to make consumers eat
at a more leisurely pace and in certain instances spend more money than faster tempos and higher
volumes. One possible explanation for musical effects would be that individuals adjust their pace
(walking, chewing, speaking), either voluntarily or involuntarily, to match the tempo of music and
walk/chew/speak faster in the presence of loud music. However, many attempts at explaining the effects
of music are based on environmental psychology theory. The individuals respond emotionally to
environmental stimuli (e.g. background music) which in turn leads to "approach-avoidance" behavior .
Approach-avoidance behavior in service environments would include emotional evaluations of the
environment, evaluations of the service experience, long-term patronage decisions, attitudes toward
others in the environment and spending behavior. Based on environmental psychology theory, two
noncompeting explanations of the effects of music in service environments may be extended. The first
suggests that molar environments provide a certain level of information .
Faster tempos and higher volumes add to the complexity of the environment, thus increasing the level of
information to be processed. Increases in information are generally related to increased arousal which in
turn may moderate approach-avoidance behavior . A second noncompeting explanation stems from the
relationship between pleasure and approach-avoidance. Namely, that the tempo, volume, and/or some
other characteristic(s) of the background music add to or detract from the pleasantness of an environment
which in turn influences approach-avoidance behavior . While plausible, little empirical support has been
provided for this alternate explanation. There is some evidence to suggest that the tempo, volume, mode
and other structural characteristics of background music influence behavior. However, music has an
affective dimension as well which may also influence behavior. A musical composition's emotional
context can have an impact on mood which in turn may mediate differing behavior within service
settings. Perhaps even more influential than general emotional tone would be the listener's level of
preference for the musical composition. The precise nature of the relationship between musical preference
and relevant service setting behavior is not currently known. It can be suggested that service patrons
should respond more (less) favorably to environments when they like (dislike) the background music.
However, there is no empirical evidence providing direct support for this proposition. Despite the lack of
direct evidence in support of preference effects, there exists some evidence linking the level of pleasure
derived from environments to approach-avoidance behaviors. Namely, people are more likely to move
toward, remain in, pay attention to, and regard favorably environments evaluated as pleasant than
environments regarded as unpleasant. Research on music as an independent variable has focused on how
the valence of music affects factors such as waiting time, and how music tempo affects behavior. Music
ameliorated the emotional evaluation of the environment for consumers waiting for a service; this, in turn,
led to approach behavior towards the service organization. Music with positive valence also triggered a
more positive emotional response to the wait. Music that is perceived to fit the store image had a positive
affect on the length of shopping time, which indirectly influenced consumers’ expenditure. In sum, music
appears to impact a variety of dependent variables, such as affective ones (mood, arousal pleasure,
emotion) , financial returns (value of sales, quantity purchased, gross margins) , attitudes and perception
(liking, brand loyalty, service quality), temporal effects
(duration perceived/actual, time to consume) and behavioral variables (patronage frequency, store
choice, in-store traffic flow).
The hypothesis taken are as follows :

Hypothesis 1 : Music will affect the actual time spent in the restaurant.

Hypothesis 2 : Music will influence the taste of the food being consumed.

Hypothesis 3 : Music will influence the amount of money spent on drinks but not the amount of money

spent on foods.

METHODOLOGY
From the articles that have been reviewed, it is understood that there are different types of customers who
respond differently. Many studies have been done to understand and find the consumers response towards
music played at the restaurant. Further research on this topic will be done by a Quantitative research in
questionnaire form of survey (Google Doc forms). The questions will be addressed to the age group 18-30
as mostly students of VIT only visit the restaurant. Likert's scale of 1-5, 1 for strongly agreeing to the
situation and 5 disagreeing strongly for analyzing reaction of consumer to the music played at the
restaurant. Questions would include the effect of music on consumers while they are eating at a
restaurant. These questions will help in identifying the behavioural response of consumers to music being
played at the restaurants.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

61 responses were taken into consideration for the research purpose. Below are the responses by the
people who took up the survey.

Prefer Tasty Bad Stop if

Ambience Romantic Meal Duration
music food music
stops
Strongly agree 11 29 24 10 16 9 6
Agree 38 17 22 20 21 15 11
Neither 12 9 11 20 13 11 20
Disagree 0 3 4 8 7 12 11
Strongly
disagree 0 3 0 3 4 14 13
 With this data, regression and correlation analysis were done to find the relation between the age and
response by the customers to music in the restaurant.

Correlation

In the correlation analysis, there is a positive correlation between age and factors like Ambience of the
restaurant and not visiting the restaurant if it stops playing music, whereas there is a negative correlation
between age and factors like preferring to listen to music while eating, feeling romantic due to the
presence of background music while eating, food tasting more delicious due to music and time spent at
the restaurant. In this the majority of the people in the age group 18-26 prefer to listen to music while
having food at the restaurant and this is because nowadays the type of atmosphere at a restaurant plays a
huge role in attracting new customers to a restaurant as well as being a priority in the list of existing
frequent customers. Some of the customers are also fine with music being there or not but a good
ambience will no doubt make the food taste more delicious for most of the customers as has been proved
in our study.
Regression

Model Summary
Adjusted Std. Error of
Model R R Square R the
Square Estimate

1 .527a .277 .180 .639

a. Predictors: (Constant), Stop coming if music stops, Prefer

music while eating, Ambience, Tasty Meal due to music?,
Romantic due to music, Duration of stay, Good music bad food

Here, our model predicts the cosumer satisfaction while listening to music while having food at a
restaurant. We can see that R=0.527, which is a positive moderate correlation. Hence, there is a moderate
relation between impact of music and age. R Square in the study is 0.277 , which means that 27.7% of the
variance in consumer behaviour can be explained by the predictors used in our study.
 Coefficientsa

Standardize
Unstandardized d
Coefficients
Coefficient
Model t Sig.
s

B Std. Error Beta

1 (Constant) 2.050 .681 3.013 .004

Ambience .177 .145 .153 1.223 .227

Prefer music while eating -.285 .112 -.457 -2.555 .014

Romantic due to music .149 .121 .187 1.236 .222

Tasty Meal due to music? .052 .096 .091 .549 .586

Duration of stay -.091 .093 -.153 -.973 .335

Good music bad food -.101 .088 -.199 -1.145 .258

Stop coming if music .055 .079 .098 .693 .491
stops

a. Dependent Variable: Age

The B coefficient tells us how many units the consumer response increases with the increase in each
predictor. For example, one point increase in the ambience corresponds to 0.177 increase in the consumer
response. We can compute the consumer response by :

Consumer Response = 2.050 + (0.177* Ambience) + (-0.285 * prefer music while eating) + (-
.149 * Romantic due to music) + (.052* Tasty Meal due to music) + (-.091* Duration of stay) +
(-.101* Good music bad food) + (.055* Stop coming if music stops)

We can also note that all B coefficients are not positive numbers. This means that for example, higher
points in ambience are associated with consumer response and so on.
Beta – These are the standard coefficients. These are the coefficients that would be obtained if you
standardized all the variables in the regression, including the dependent and the independent variables,
and ran the regression.

MAJOR FINDINGS
From the report, we were able to accumulate the below given findings :

More than 80% consumers preferred listening to music while eating.

65% of the consumers preferred slow music while 30% of the consumers were fine with any
type of music.

45% of the consumers agreed that the food being consumed appeared to be more
delicious when background music was playing.

More than 75% of the consumers agreed that they would spend more time at the
restaurant than usual if background music was being played.

The most important finding was that although customers preferred listening to music while eating,
70% of the consumers voted in favour of coming back to the restaurant even if they
stopped playing music, provided the restaurant still provided highly delicious food.

CONCLUSION
The following study both synthezises and builds on the efforts to conceptualize the effect that music has
on the consumer behaviour in a restaurant. There is a positive correlation between age and factors like age
and factors like ambience and stopping to come to the restaurant if the music stops whereas negative for
factors like preferring to listen to music while eating, feeling romantic due to the presence of background
music while eating, food tasting more delicious due to music and time spent at the restaurant. There is a
moderate relation between impact of music and age, and that 27.7% of the variance in consumer
behaviour can be explained by the predictors used in our study. With regard to hypothesis 1, the results of
the analysis indicated that music will affect the actual time spent in the restaurant. With regard to
hypothesis 2, there was some evidence to suggest that music influences the taste of the food being
consumed. The results of the analysis on Hypothesis 3 were not conclusive. The most important finding
was that although customers preferred listening to music while eating, the majority of the customers voted
in favour of coming back to the restaurant even if they stopped playing music, provided the restaurant still
provided highly delicious food.
REFERENCES

[1] Play That One Again: the Effect of Music Tempo on Consumer Behaviour in a Restaurant ,
Clare Caldwell and Sally A. Hibbert, University of Strathclyde, Scotland – 1999

[2] J Duncan Herrington, (1996) “Effects of music in service environments - a field study” ,
Journal of Service Marketing, Vol. 10 Issue:2, pp.26-41,
https://doi.org/10.1108/08876049610114249