Abstract

When searching for and buying new products, consumers’ knowledge is often limited, and some (but not all) options in the choice set are unrecognized. In such situations, research on the recognition heuristic shows that people tend to choose more often the recognized option over the unrecognized one, as they infer it has the higher value regarding the criterion being judged. Since humans are particularly good at rapidly recognising familiar music, this paper examines the effect of recognition to influence brand choice when using music as the recognition cue. In two experiments (N = 486), participants were familiarised with several excerpts of advertising music. Participants then performed a choosing task to decide which of two brands they would purchase when searching for different products (e.g., headphones, cameras). Brands were either presented with familiar music clips or completely novel ones. Results showed that pairing brands with music that can be recognised by the target consumers increased brand choice by 6% (d = .21). Importantly, participants’ preferences for the advertising music also influenced brand choice, increasing the effect of recognition when the music was liked and suppressing it in extreme cases when the music was most disliked. This suggests that ad practitioners should use a cue integration framework when working with music, weighing all available musical and extra-musical cues according to their impact on the target consumers. Results are discussed in terms of the practical implications of measuring brand’s ROI when working with music and the value of the heuristics-and-biases framework to study music effects on consumer behaviour.

摘要

在搜索和购买新产品时，消费者的知识往往是有限的，选择集中的一些（但不是全部）选项无法识别。在这种情况下，对识别启发式的研究表明，人们倾向于更频繁地选择已识别的选项而不是未识别的选项，因为他们推断它在判断标准方面具有更高的价值。由于人类特别擅长快速识别熟悉的音乐，本文研究了在使用音乐作为识别提示时识别对影响品牌选择的影响。在两个实验中 ( N = 486), 参与者熟悉了几个广告音乐的片段。然后，参与者执行一项选择任务，以决定在搜索不同产品（例如，耳机、相机）时他们会购买两个品牌中的哪一个。品牌要么展示熟悉的音乐片段，要么展示全新的音乐片段。结果表明，将品牌与目标消费者能够识别的音乐配对，可使品牌选择增加 6%（d=.21）。重要的是，参与者对广告音乐的偏好也会影响品牌选择，在喜欢音乐时增加识别效果，在最不喜欢音乐的极端情况下抑制识别效果。这表明广告从业者在处理音乐时应使用提示整合框架，根据对目标消费者的影响权衡所有可用的音乐和音乐外提示。结果讨论了在使用音乐时衡量品牌投资回报率的实际意义，以及启发式和偏见框架在研究音乐对消费者行为的影响方面的价值。