Distinguishing Between the Meanings of Music: When Background Music Affects Product Perceptions
Published 8/1/2005
Author: Rui (Juliet) Zhu and Joan Meyers-Levy
View this content
Executive Summary
This article examines when and why ad recipients are likely to infer either of two types of meaning from muted ad background music and use such meaning when rendering their perceptions of the advertised product. Drawing on music theory, the authors distinguish between two types of music meaning: (1) embodied meaning, which is purely hedonic, context independent, and based on the degree of stimulation that the musical sound affords, and (2) referential meaning, which is context dependent and reflects the networks of semantic concepts that the music may bring to mind.
The authors find that when ad recipients process an advertisement in a low-effort, nonintensive way, they are unlikely to infer either of these meanings from the ad music. Instead, they tend to base their product perceptions on relatively salient yet superficial executional aspects of the ad message (e.g., the clarity of the spokesperson’s voice). Conversely, the music meaning that relatively effortful, intensive ad processors infer and use varies depending on the level of mental resources that are required to process the more substantive aspects of the advertisements (e.g., the ad message).
Discerning and using a musical composition’s referential versus embodied meaning is more mentally taxing. Therefore, ad recipients who engage in intensive ad processing but receive an advertisement that imposes relatively low demands on their mental resources are likely to base their product perceptions on the background music’s referential meaning--provided that this meaning is semantically relevant to the product dimension in question. However, intensive ad processors who receive an advertisement that imposes greater demands on their mental resources tend to base their perceptions on the music’s embodied meaning.
Evidence from two studies that assess different types of music, ad messages, and perceptions support these conclusions. Not only do such findings significantly advance the theoretical understanding of how music is processed and used, they also offer potentially important guidance to practitioners using music in virtually any realm (e.g., advertising, Web sites, theater).
Biography
Rui Zhu is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota and her undergraduate degree in Economics from University of International Business and Economics, China. Her research interests include consumer information processing and psychology, self-regulation, music effects, and experiential processing.
Joan Meyers-Levy is Professor of Marketing in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. She has been actively involved in numerous marketing-related professional organizations and conferences and was recognized for her extensive research contributions by the Society for Consumer Psychology. Her research interests encompass a variety of consumer-related issues, such as people’s processing of visual, verbal, and other modalities of information; their use of alternative types of information processing; and how contextual and various individual difference factors affect people’s processing and response.
J Marketing Research, Volume 42, Number 3, August 2005
View Table of Contents.