Background and foreground music in video commercials : a study across product categories

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BACKGROUND AND FOREGROUND MUSIC IN VIDEO COMMERCIALS:

A STUDY ACROSS PRODUCT CATEGORIES

a thesis presented by  Chiara Mainardi 

11087064

with the supervision of Dr. Frauke Mattison Thompson

to 

the University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and Business in fulfilment for the degree of

Master of Science  

in Business Administration, Marketing

Amsterdam, the Netherlands June 23, 2017

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Statement of Originality

This document is written by student Chiara Mainardi, who declares to take

full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and

that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have

been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the

super-vision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have reached my final step in attaining my Master’s Degree in Business Administra-tion at the University of Amsterdam, with the compleAdministra-tion of this research. Writing a doc-ument of this nature has been an interesting learning experience. I have always been interested in the way music finds its way in people’s life and in marketing practice and now I am even more involved.

I first would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Frauke Mattison Thompson, who believed in this project since the very first day and made me feel like I was going in the right direction. A special thank goes to all those who participated in the survey and showed their interest in the project. I would then like to thank my beloved family mem-bers, who always let me be what I need, foster my growth and respect my choices and feelings. This extends to all the friends and colleagues that supported me so carefully. In particular, I would like to thank Willy, for the most beautiful flowers, and my sister,

Eleonora: your courage, your curiosity and kindred spirit showed me that a better way is possible and improvement is the true engine of happiness.

You all have been the light to the realisation of this project. I hope reading this thesis will spike your interest in the topic area.

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ABSTRACT

Music is part of everyone’s life and its persuasive power is well known to people as well as companies. The usage of music in marketing has spread quickly in the last cen-tury with the introduction of new technologies such as the radio and the television. In particular, music has been employed in video commercials first as a jingle, then through the selection of actual author songs. In the context of a video commercial, music can be used in the foreground or in the background. The current study is across product cate-gories, and is aimed to reveal what is the most efficient way to apply music for hedonic and utilitarian consumption in video commercials. Results show that there is a statistical-ly significant relation between the product category advertised and the audience’s pref-erence for the role of the music which is employed. In particular, evidence shows that when music is in the foreground, it is most suitable to advertise hedonic value, leverag-ing influences such as emotion triggerleverag-ing and affective involvement. On the other hand, music in the background best suits utilitarian value, accompanying the audience’s cogni-tive process without provoking distractions from the central information to be delivered. Moreover, I took into consideration the five defining elements of foreground and back-ground music, as learnt from Stout and Leckenby (1988) paper, and a Repeated Mea-sures ANOVA demonstrates that these elements differently influence the customer’s po-tential choice. In particular, emotion triggering and involvement in the story plot are the features that led participants to mostly prefer a dominant music for a hedonic product; while the fact that music plays a secondary role is the most beneficiary influence when it comes to advertising a product conveying utilitarian value.

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LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

TABLE 1. Six ways music can contribute to enhance an advertisement’s efficacy 21

TABLE 2. Five defining elements of the Roles of Music 23

TABLE 3. Hypothesis Overview 28

TABLE 4. Four Treatments 2x2 32

TABLE 5. Four Treatments Merged into Two 32

TABLE 6. Summary Table of Hypothesis 48

TABLE 7. % Music Preference for Utilitarian Product Category 50

TABLE 8. % Music Preference for Hedonic Product Category 51

FIGURE 1. The Wheel of Consumer Analysis 16

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I. INTRODUCTION

“Music often carries me away like a sea!  Toward my pale star,   Beneath a ceiling of mist or in a vast sky, 

I cast anchor.” Charles Baudelaire (1863)

Music has been a prominent component in advertising since the first network broad-cast was transmitted in 1923 (Hettinger, 1933) and by the late 1930s the “singing com-mercial” had become an usual praxis. By the 1950s, with the introduction of the televi-sion, music made a smooth transition to video, where it keeps playing an important role in broadcast advertising nowadays. By the 1990s, over 90% of the TV commercials in-cludes music and Tharp (1989) defined music as “the main creative ingredient” of video commercials.  

The sums of money spent by advertisers are large, can range from 10,000$ for an original composition or the use of a jingle to 500,000$ and more for the rights of popular songs. Companies are risking millions of dollars on the assumption that music can in-crease the sells by attracting attention, conveying implicit and explicit messages, gener-ating emotions, helping people to retain information (Zander, 2006), medigener-ating between disjoint images, increasing the recognition of the product, assisting in targeting a specific market (Huron, 1989). 

Music is power because it ensures the connections between images on screens, likeminded people and even their own emotions; it drives ideas and suggests action.  The purpose of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with the main topic - music power and usage in a video commercial across product category - and to offer an overview on

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the structure and contributions of this research. Next, the context of the research prob-lem, the main research questions, an overview on the methods, expected outcomes and significance of the study will be debated.

Despite previous evidence emphasises that music has significant consequences on people’s physiological and psychological reactions, moods and emotions, wellbeing and even behaviour through the creation of a variety of human affective experiences (Camp-bell, 1942; Henkin,1956; Dickinson, 1958; Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Gabrielsson, 1991); yet there is no universally accepted explanation of these assumptions. These persuasive forces have been widely leveraged in a marketing context, especially in video commer-cials (Huron, 1989; Berg and Infante,1976), but the need to investigate on how con-sumers process advertising containing music is still live.  

Sound in commercials can be employed in two different ways: in the foreground or in the background. The first involves music as a dominant medium to carry the meaning and message of the advertisement. The latter includes music as a chaperone to a mes-sage that is delivered in a different way, perhaps via spoken word or written text (Stout and Leckenby, 1988). While researching on this elucidation, I realised that there is no study comparing directly the efficacy of these two methods of music employment. In par-ticular, the differences have only been established theoretically and no experiment has been run in order to get concrete observation. Noticing this interesting gap in the litera-ture, I decided to lay the foundations of this research in a direct comparison between the two, and I took into consideration video commercials as the main reference. Interesting-ly, the more I read on the matter, the more I got accustomed to the idea that using music in the foreground would be more effective on customer’s attitude to advertise products that are affect-based, thus represent hedonic consumption. As previous research

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sug-gests, the more salient the music is, the higher the probability that the commercial will be affect based (Alpert and Alpert, 1990). This intuition made me wonder if the other way around would also work for the opposite class, utilitarian value: maybe for this category using music in the background would be way more effective. After all, researchers long debated on the fact that music might also work as a distraction and might end up being not effective or, worse, deleterious (Macklin, 1988; Sewall and Sarel, 1986). 

Given all the contrasting evidence and question marks, I became very determined to find out more on this topic. The questions are many, and past investigation lacks in pro-viding the answers. Is music an effective tool or not? Can the contrasting evidence from previous research be related to the fact that product category has never been taken into account? And what would be different if we considered product category, is there a sig-nificant relationship between the use of music and the product type? Is it true that salient, dominant, foreground music is more suitable for affect based commercials, thus to endorse hedonic goods? And what about using music in the background for utilitarian consumption, will that still be interfering with the information acquisition process or will actually ease it?

The best way to address this problem was creating an experimental survey and pre-senting the participants with a choice. Participants were shown two video commercials for hedonic category, one of them with music in the foreground and the other in the background, and were asked to indicate what product they would purchase, considering exclusively the video seen. After that, they were asked questions on the main music fea-tures involved and finally their personal opinion on the use of music in the commercial chosen. The same process has been run for the utilitarian product category. Detailed

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in-formation is to be found in the chapter IV. Research Design and Methodology, and the structure of the survey in chapter X. Appendix.

The outcomes will hopefully reveal a significant relation between the use of music and the product category and will shed light on new best practices to rely on during the creative processes for a video commercial. Despite the fact that music is one of the es-sential tools of marketing and is broadly adopted in the industry, experimental research of this kind is lacking. For this reason I expect the results of the current academic work to disclose a new delineated approach and to be of utmost prominence for marketeers and practitioners worldwide.

Next, I will introduce the structure of the thesis. In the next chapter a review of the literature on music’s persuasive power, music usage in a marketing and video commer-cial contexts, on the roles of music and on the interested product categories is provided. Furthermore, the hypothesis to test are explained and formulated. In the following chap-ter, the research design and methodology is explained. The results of the research and their interpretation will be debated in chapters V and VI. Finally conclusions, including managerial implications, limits and suggestions for future research, are given.

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II. LITERATURE REVIEW 

This chapter provides a comprehensive review of the literature about the key con-cepts in this study, in order to analyse what has already been studied about the effect of music on consumer’s affection and behaviour across product categories in the context of video commercials. The aim of this chapter is to identify and present the relevant re-search gaps that will be subsequently studied and discussed. First, a general under-standing about the persuasive effects of music on the human body and moods, and how these effects have been employed in a marketing context, is provided. Afterwards, the difference between the two roles of music (background and foreground) and the impor-tance of taking into account this classification when implementing an effective video commercial is presented. Finally, the priority of acknowledging the product category ad-vertised, with particular distinction between hedonic and utilitarian consumption, and the difference between the two is discussed. Simultaneously, the identification of research gaps and the subsequent development of research questions and hypothesis are pro-vided.

II. i. The persuasive effects of music on body and mood 

That a proper relationship to art provides the paradigm for the good life is opinion of many. Schoen (1929) considered music as the expression of all the arts, because its suggestive power is closer in nature to the concept of pure feeling. Music can affect people’s moods, psychological reactions and behaviour through the creation of a variety of peak human affective experiences (Gabrielsson, 1991). Music is the highest, albeit the most irrational, form of art, because it expresses the essence of human emotions (Kohn, 1949). This has been confirmed by previous research in several disciplines and subjects. In general, music effects have been studied by measuring physiological

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reac-tions and verbal records. The level of agreement is high amongst academicians and re-searchers that music can produce changes in the body, such as breathing, pulse rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response (Dreher, 1947; Henkin, 1956; Traxel and Wreder, 1959; Blood and Zatorre, 2001; Nyklíček, 1997). Many people experience a particularly intense reaction when listening to music, such as “chills” or “shivers-down-the-spine” and previous research in the field of neurology shows how music elicits neural systems of emotion and reward, usually evoked by biologically relevant stimuli, such as food and sex, or by stimuli activated through drugs and artificial substances. This proves that mu-sic might not be imperative for survival but of essential benefit to human’s mental and physical well-being (Blood and Zatorre, 2001). Classic research on the neurology of mu-sic (e.g. Steinberg, 1995) emphasized a critical role of the right hemisphere of the brain in emotive appreciation of music (Zatorre, 1984, Peretz, 1990). This again suggests an affiliation between affection and musical processes in the brain. Also, music has a calm-ing and soothcalm-ing effect on some forms of mental illness: when used as a therapeutic technique it was found to be particularly helpful for patients revealing high levels of anxi-ety (Dickinson, 1958). This theory has been also confirmed by Meyer (1957) who argued that emotions were elicited when a tendency to respond was inhibited: music is a mean of arousing these tendencies, this leads to the elimination of inner tension. Music’s role of alleviating tensions and frustrations can work through the decreased amount of self-awareness (Lidz, 1968). When music is introduced in the environment, the general anxi-ety level drops, suggesting that music is the vehicle for emotional release (Peretti, 1972). Music has also been proven to increase work efficiency and decrease frustration and boredom while performing a task (Farnsworth, 1965; Winckel, 1967). Past research brings evidence on the relevance of music’s persuasive power on people’s everyday life: music is often used in benign ways, but in the past it has also been used to support

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de-structive ideals (for instance, Nazi Germany used music for its prominent role to sway the masses during the Party events). Nowadays, music videos have great influence on lifestyles and trends adopted by youngsters.

Music effects do not only apply to the brain and its physiological responses, but they extend to moods and emotions. For example, considering the field of experimental psy-chology, music is one of the most effective methods that has been used to induct moods (Pignatiello et al., 1989; Kenealy, 1988; Mayer et al., 1995). Mood has been defined as an ephemeral, temporary feeling state perceived by individuals (Gardner, 1985). Mood can adopt a positive connotation such as cheerfulness, peacefulness, or a negative connotation such as sadness, anxiety, frustration. Mood refers to feeling states that are ephemeral, thus temporary, and might be tied to specific situations (Peterson and

Sauber 1983). According toClark and Isen (1982) moods occur several times during the day and one may or may not be aware of the undergoing feeling states, which thus do not usually interrupt ongoing behaviour. Moods can be distinguished from emotions, which are usually more intense than moods, more awareness-getting, and tied to specif-ic behaviours so to be able to interrupt ongoing behaviour (Simon, 1967). Emotions are related to feelings such as joy, fear, jealousy, rage and rapture (Freud, 1955).

In conclusion, music persuasive effects on human brain, body and moods have been widely recognised by researchers in many fields of study, such as physiology, psycholo-gy, medicine and even economics. I will develop these relations and dynamics in more detail in the section below II.i.a. The effect of music structural elements on emotional re-actions.  

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II. i. a. The effect of music’s structural elements on emotional reactions 

As previously mentioned, music acts on the nervous system activating brain process-es that corrprocess-espond to emotional reactions. Modifying structural elements of the music has an impact on the expressiveness of the music itself and consequently leads to dif-ferent elicited moods (Campbell, 1942). The expressive features of a music work include such things as pitch patterns, rhythm patterns, modality, harmonies and other music structural characteristics. Studying these elements and their impact on emotions as they vary can be helpful to learn how to predict and manipulate these effects to lead to de-sired outcomes (Hevner, 1935). For this reason it is important to discourse on the effects of structural characteristics of music on emotional reactions. Kate Hevner (1936, 1937) was amongst the first academics to study in depth the elements of music and their effect on emotions. After her, many others followed this path and, overall, the main findings can be summarised as follows:

• Fast vs. Slow Tempo: Tempo is proven to be the most important feature in determining the mood effects of music (Hevner,1936; Rigg, 1964). Other things being equal, fast tempo is associated with feelings of happiness, joy, excitement and vigour, while slow tempo is associated with serene, sad, dignified feeling.

• Low vs. High Pitch: High pitch evokes cheerful, light, happy feelings, while low pitch is associated with vigorous-majestic, dignified and serious emotions (Campbell, 1942; Rigg, 1964).

• Major vs Minor mode: Major mode is dynamic, bright, clear and more determining than the minor mode. Major mode expresses merry and light feelings, while minor mode is strongly associated with dreamy longing and tender sentimental moods. Minor mode is characterised by mystery, obscurity, sorrow, melancholy. Commercials with major or

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mixed modes seems to evoke greater behavioural intent toward ads, while minor modes was rated as more irritating and generally generated a less favourable re-sponse (Stout and Leckenby, 1988). Other things being equal, the major mode has an influence towards happiness while the minor mode tends to elicit sadness.

• Simple vs Complex Harmonies: Simple consonant harmonies are happy, serene and graceful, while modern complex and dissonant harmonies are associated to feelings of excitement, agitations and somehow sadness. For instance, a phrase suggesting joy is less joyful when more complex features are introduced (Rigg, 1964).

• Faster vs Flowing Rhythm: A firm rhythm is associated with vigorous, exciting, dignified emotions, while a flowing rhythm evokes dreamy, elegant, smooth feelings.

Mood effects of music are well established and the level of agreement amongst aca-demics is high with regards to the responsible features. (Hevner, 1936; Campbell, 1942; Rigg, 1946). Tempo and time-related findings all come together to a general conclusion: all other elements being equal, fast music is perceived to be more happy and pleasant than slow music (Gundlach, 1935; Watson, 1942; Wedin, 1972). Pitch-related findings generally show that music with a high pitch is more exciting than low pitched music, which is perceived as sad (Gundlach, 1935; Hevner, 1937; Watson 1942). Texture-relat-ed findings mostly focus on volume, indicating that louder music is describTexture-relat-ed as tri-umphant/exciting while softer music is perceived as tranquil and peaceful. Despite gen-eral findings lead to similar gengen-eral conclusion, no definitive taxonomy of music ele-ments has been defined, and academics often have a hard time in controlling and lever-aging these multifaceted variables. However, it is important to highlight that music ele-ments are interdependent and influence each other (Meyer, 1904) “for music is not the mere sum of these elements, but a new creation from them” (Britan, 1911).

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In conclusion, music and its structural features interaction convey an important per-suasive power on people’s moods, mental outlook and demeanor. For this reason, the employment of music is of extreme importance in a marketing context. In the following section it is shown how marketeers exploit music’s power to direct customer’s attitude and behaviour.  

II. ii. Music and Marketing

According to Behavioural Modification Perspective, which is an approach that com-plements the more cognitively-oriented marketing analysis approaches, placing stimuli in the consumer’s environment influences consumer’s behaviour (Nord&Peter, 1980). There is considerable evidence that designing physical situations with elements such as sound, odors, color and lights have powerful effects on behaviours (Barker, 1978).

The Wheel of Consumer Analysis, introduced by Peter and Olson (1999), illustrates three aspects: Consumer Affect and Cognition, Environment and Consumer Behaviour (Figure 1). This tool shows that understanding consumer’s internal psychological pro-cesses (including cognitive and affective responses, preferences and intentions) and manipulating the stimuli in customer’s environ-ment are equally important to the success of a marketing strategy. These features are intercon-nected and must be considered equally in order to design and implement a marketing strategy which is effective on consumer’s behaviour. In the marketing world, music is a stimulus to place in customer’s environment to influence their

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fect and cognition and eventually their behaviour.  

In the previous section II.i. The persuasive effects of music on body and mood, music has been proven to be an effective tool for moods triggering and nonverbal communica-tion. Marketeers often use music to positively influence customer’s behaviour, leveraging the effect that music has on moods.  

Moods are a particularly important variable in consumer behaviour (Gardner and Vandersteel 1984; West-brook 1980) because they play an important role in information processing and evaluative processes (Park, Gardner and Thukral 1982; Schwartz and Clore, 1983) and other aspects of consumer behaviour (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982), thus their comprehension becomes crucial to understand consumer behaviour and de-sign and implement marketing strategies and actions (Belk 1975; Lutz and Kakkar 1975) and plays a determinant role in defining consumer behaviour in several contexts (Alpert and Alpert, 1991) such as advertisement exposure through video commercials. 

The present section ii. Music and Marketing is aimed to bring to light the dynamics between music and marketing strategies, that usually leverage the mechanism of mood triggering.

One of the researchers who tackled this relation first is Gorn (1982). Gorn studied music influence on consumer’s choice from a classical conditioning perspective. Classi-cal conditioning theory (Nord&Peter, 1980) suggests that pairing a neutral stimulus (e.g. a brand or a product) with an unconditioned stimulus (e.g. music) leads to a conditioned response that might be associated with that brand or product (e.g. a preference). Gorn (1982) shows that pairing the picture of a pen (neutral stimulus) with liked music (uncon-ditioned stimulus) could significantly affect the preference for the pen (con(uncon-ditioned stimu-lus). Gorn (1982) research demonstrates that hearing liked or disliked music when being exposed to a product can directly affect our preference towards that product. This

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proves that the customer’s preference and behaviour can be influenced through simple pairing of stimuli without the necessity of complex cognitive processes. This might be relevant for non informational, low-involvement advertisements where the goal is to leave the customer with a “feeling” for the product, without involving cognitive processes (Alpert&Alpert, 1990). Many researchers challenged Gorn’s assumption and results on a methodological level (Allen and Madden, 1985; Park and Young, 1986). However, in-cluding Gorn in the current study’s literature review is important, for the reason that he can be considered the pathfinder of research on customer’s potential choice and reac-tion to musical stimuli. Many others after him extended his work showing that customer’s preference is significantly greater when stimulated with background music than when music is absent (Bierley, McSweeney and Vannieuwkerk, 1985).

Music not only influences product perception (Zhu and Meyers-Levy, 2005), but most importantly it has a relevant impact on purchase behaviour. For example, music effects have been studied in environments such as supermarkets or restaurants, to make the experience more enjoyable and relaxed and perhaps distract the customers from the to-tal cost in the cart (Brand, 1963). It has been proven that when the music volume is louder, significantly less time is spent shopping in a supermarket than when it is lower, and no difference in customer satisfaction and average sale per person has been re-ported, meaning that sales per minute indicator was significantly higher under loud ume conditions (Smith and Curnow, 1966). This negative correlation between music vol-ume and shopping time suggests that marketers can manipulate the number of persons in the store increasing or decreasing the volume of the music played.  

Managers from 52 retail stores of various types have been interviewed and ex-pressed the belief that background music has a positive effect on customer’s mood and as a consequence a positive outcome on sales. Customers of the same retail stores

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pre-ferred stores that played music and 63% of them said that they purchased more in stores with background music playing (Burleson, 1979). In general, in store permanence is higher in a slow tempo condition (72 BPM or less) than in the fast tempo condition (94 BPM or more) and a music tempo experiment in a supermarket environment has shown that sales levels are significantly higher in the slow tempo condition than with fast rhythm music (Millman, 1982). A similar music tempo manipulation has been replicated in a restaurant and once the food was served, customers in the slow-music treatment took more time to finish their dinner (56 minutes) than those in the fast-music treatment (45 minutes) and they ate about the same amount of food but those in the slow-tempo con-dition consumed more alcoholic beverages (Millman, 1986). Building on the last two studies discussed, it has been shown that comparing the effects of foreground music, background music and no music treatments in a store setting, younger shoppers (under 25) thought they had spent more time in the store when background music was playing, while older shoppers perceived they had shopped longer while foreground music was being played. From this, Yalch and Spangenberg (1988) concluded that time appears to slow down when shoppers encounter nontypical musical environmental stimuli. 

Music’s emotional stimulus is also important in the online shopping environment. Background music tempo positively influences the customer’s attitude and affective re-sponses (Ding&Lin, 2011), suggesting that marketers should pay more attention to the design of online shopping environment. While in the context of radio commercials, in-cluding music in an ad leads to higher recall scores than only using straight announce-ment format, regardless of the programming circumstance (Hunt, 1988).

In conclusion, previous studies on the relation between music and marketing actions show that music has emotional value for human beings, who react to music with

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non-random affective responses. This led practitioners to embrace the suggestion of marry-ing music to video for marketmarry-ing purposes. Music used in marketmarry-ing-related contexts can evoke consumer’s affective and cognitive responses. Music is an important stimulus to understand and employ and can play many roles of interest for marketers (Hecker, 1984). Greater understanding about music persuasion, music elements and music role on customer’s preferences, intentions and behaviour in marketing-related contexts is needed. 

II. iii. Music in video commercials 

Music accompanied the very first motion pictures during an exhibition in Paris in 1895 by the Lumière brothers (Evans, 1975) and the use of musical accompaniment in film-strips, television productions and video commercial is widely recognised by marketers and media specialists. Filmmakers, from Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen have known that manipulating background music and soundtrack can influence the tone of a certain scene. Many broadcast commercials incorporate a music stimulus (Stewart et al., 1990) and many assume that music adds value to a commercial (Stout et al., 1990).  

Seidman (1981) reviewed the contributions of music to media production such as movies and documentaries, concluding that the musical stimuli can influence affective and cognitive responses. This conclusion seems to have been implemented by agents in the movie industry, as the development of marrying music to video is evident (Zettl, 1973). By the late 1930s music video commercials such as “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot” had become ordinary practice. During the 1950s musical ads made their transition to television, where they continue playing an important role still nowadays. Advertisers spend large sums of money on the production of musical commercials: the fee for a cre-ative original composition can cost over 10,000$ (Karmen, 1989). The rights for popular

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song can have higher costs, for example, Nike paid 500,000$ to use The Beatles’ song “Revolution” (Cocks, 1987).  

Table 1. shows six basic ways in which music can contribute to an effective broadcast advertisement (Huron, 1989):

In a series of experiments, Voinovich (1975) shows that different musical stimuli, in-ducing different musical moods, produced different interpretations of the same video stimulus. This suggests that viewers tend to create a predictable cognitive interpretation that corresponds to the mood evoked by the musical stimulus. Audience perception of the message conveyed can be influenced manipulating the modality of the ad’s back-ground music (Berg&Infante, 1976) and audience attention can be directed to certain features of the message, especially in film and television, so-called fixed-paced media (Fleming&Levie, 1978).  

Table 1. Six ways music can contribute to enhance an ad’s efficacy: Entertainment: Makes the ad more attractive

Structure/Continuity: Smoothly ties together a set of scenes that would be disjoint without music

Memorability: Increase the memorability of the product or product’s name

Melodic Quality: Conveyance of a message in a non spoken way Targeting: Helps defining the specific market

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In general, when a musical element is added, a media presentation is perceived as more powerful and dynamic (Tannebaum, 1956). Music can influence not only the infor-mation retrieved by the audience but also purchase intent is higher when the ad is pre-sented with music (Stout & Leckenby, 1988) and, in general, subjects have more nega-tive attitudes towards ads without music.

In the context of a video commercial, music can adopt two different roles (Stout and Leckenby, 1988): music can be in the foreground or in the background of the ad.  

While researching more on this matter, I realised that there is almost no study com-paring foreground and background music roles directly. For this reason, the purpose of the current study is to fill this void and research on the two roles of music by means of a direct comparison. Further details and definitions will be found in the next section II. iii. a. Foreground and Background: Two Roles of Music in Video Commercials. 

II. iii. a. Foreground and Background: Two Roles of Music in Video Commercials

“Consumer response to commercial music is a function of the role music plays within the ad” (Stout and Leckenby, 1988), i.e. whether music serves a foreground or back-ground role. Foreback-ground and backback-ground are opposite ways to use the sound in com-mercials. 

Foreground music is is an elemental part of the advertising commercial, playing a message-enhancing role through a thematic which is coherent with the information con-veyed; it tends to be dominant, distinctive, to get attention and probably relies on lyrics. Foreground music is the main element of the advertisement, the message is conveyed through the combination of video and music only and these sensory features are more likely to elicit the audiences affection. For these reasons, foreground music is likely to be

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part of an affect-based commercial (Stout and Leckenby, 1988). 

Background music is less dominant and noticeable, less likely to be affect-based, to catch attention and is more likely to be purely instrumental (Alpert and Alpert, 1991). When music is included in the background, it solves a secondary role in the ad in com-parison to another main feature. For instance, when music is in the background, its func-tion is to accompany a message delivered via voice or written informafunc-tion, fostering the audiences’ cognitive capacity to elaborate the message in an analytical way. For these reasons, background music is more likely to be part of a cognitive-based commercial (Stout and Leckenby, 1988). 

Table 2 shows the five defining features of the roles of music, as per Stout&Leckenby (1988) and Alpert&Alpert (1991) papers, highlighting the diversity and peculiarities be-tween the two.

These characteristics have only been defined theoretically and previous research does not examine whether their impact on customer’s preference is the same or some of them are more or less persuading than the others. With the current research, I will try to determine if the five defining features (for both foreground and background conditions)

Table 2. Five Defining Elements of the Roles of Music

FOREGROUND BACKGROUND

1. Plays a main role 1. Plays a secondary role

2. Dominant, distinctive 2. Not dominant

3. Triggers emotions 3. Does not trigger particular emotions 4. Makes you feel involved in the storyline 4. Does not serve transportational function 5. Grabs your attention 5. Does not grab your attention

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are equal in average - thus they have the same impact on audience’s preference - or at least one is different from the others; to assume that they differ from each other in aver-age means that one of them has a greater or lower impact on audience’s predilection for the product advertised. I expect the aforementioned (Table 2) defining features of both foreground and background conditions to be different in average, because some of them directly relate to the emotions of the audiences (e.g. attention grabbing, emotions trig-gering) while others are not directly related to their experience (e.g. secondary role, dominance).

H1a: In the context of a video commercial, of the five defining features characterising the role of music: Foreground, there is at least one that influences more (or less) the customer’s preference towards the product.

H1b: In the context of a video commercial, of the five defining features characterising the role of music: Background, there is at least one that influences more (or less) the customer’s preference towards the product.

Previous research shows contradictory findings regarding background music in ad-vertising. Some academics argue that although background music is so diffuse we often don’t perceive its presence, evidence shows that it can produce emotional and physical responses (Graystone, 1974). Nonetheless, other research has found that background music has no significant effect on brand recall and recognition (Macklin, 1988; Sewall and Sarel, 1986) nor on attitude towards the commercial or attitude towards the brand (Macklin, 1988), advising that its impact on consumer response is relatively insignificant.   By definition, background music doesn’t draw attention or facilitate deep processing, however a familiar music or genre can suggest images for the product advertised and foster association process. Brooker and Wheatley (1994) found that placing background

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music at the beginning of the ad without voiceover drew attention and served as a lead-in for the message, actually enhanclead-ing the message. Music also appears to assist recall of slogans when the slogans are included in the commercial as foreground music in the form of a jingle/song and this formula performs more effectively than the same verbal material presented with background music (Yalch, 1991).

Given these differences and peculiarities of the roles of music (e.g music in the back-ground accompanies the message and is more likely to be part of a cognitive-based ad, while in the foreground music works better as an emotional trigger and is more likely to be part of an affect-based ad) my interest grew for a study across product categories, hedonic and utilitarian in particular. It is in my opinion and belief that music used in a cer-tain way might impact on customer’s attitude towards the product differently than when it is used in a different way, depending on the product category advertised. I assume that directly comparing the two roles of music in a study across product categories will high-light a statistically significant relation between music preference and product category.

H2: There is a statistically significant relation between product category (hedonic or utilitarian) and music preference (foreground or background).

The product categories taken into account are hedonic and utilitarian, whose defini-tion will be presented in more detail in the next secdefini-tion II. iv. Product categories: Hedonic vs. Utilitarian.

II. iv. Product categories: Hedonic vs. Utilitarian

Academics and advertising professionals rely on many characteristics to classify products. In particular, as customers know from experience, some products are more likely to evoke pleasure than others. Partially on the basis of this observation, a

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distinc-tion has been drawn between utilitarian and hedonic consumpdistinc-tion (Hirschman and Hol-brook 1982; HolHol-brook and Hirschman 1982; Dhar and Wertenbroch 2000). This classifi-cation is fundamental in a marketing context because choice purchasing processes and reactions are different for hedonic and utilitarian items (O’Curry and Strahilevitz, 2001; Jones et al., 2006).

It is general knowledge that utilitarian value is defined as an overall evaluation of functional benefits and costs. Utilitarian consumption is motivated by practical needs and typically involves functional and instrumental goods, such as personal computers, elec-trical appliances and cleaning products. Utilitarian value incorporates cognitive aspects of attitude, such as economic and financial value and judgement of convenience and time savings; utilitarian goods do not convey but a practical and rational meaning. Ulti-mately, utilitarian value is related to cognitive information seeking and functional mean-ing. 

According to this definition, I assume that products that convey an utilitarian/function-al meaning are more effectively advertised when music is in the background of the commercial, rather than in the foreground. As evidence suggests, background music al-lows important information to be delivered to the audience without interfering with their cognitive process as much as foreground music does. Utilitarian consumption is related to cognitive information seeking, music in the background of the commercial allows the accompaniment of the information acquisition process without distraction. Previous re-search lacks on this matter, and this assumption has never been tested.

H3a: When the product advertised is utilitarian, using music in the background of the ad, rather than in the foreground, will be more effective on customer’s attitude and potential purchasing behaviour towards the product.

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Hedonic consumption has been defined as “those facets of consumer behaviour that relate to the multi-sensory, fantasy and emotive aspects of product usage

experience” (Hirschman & Holbrook 1982). The word “multi-sensory” refers to the expe-rience in multiple sensory modalities, including taste, scent, sound, visual and tactile. Through the senses emotional arousal is elicited. Hedonic consumption is motivated by the desire of fantasy, fun, pleasure; hedonic goods typically carry identity value or sym-bolic meaning and are considered frivolous or even decadent, such as designer clothes, sports cars, luxury watches (O’Curry and Strahilevitz, 2001). Hedonic consumptions has been studied to be tied to imaginative constructions of reality, thus consumption actions are based on what customer desire reality to be more than what customers know to be real (Singer, 1966). Utilitarian value solves a functional and practical purpose and its im-portance is related to its use, although previous research has shown that products are chosen not only for what they can do, but also for what they mean. Hedonic products have symbolic meanings that portray the lifestyle of a consumer (Levy, 1959); they solve an emotional and sensory purpose, and their features may be relates to the concepts of luxury and exclusivity. A hedonic product is not a necessary product, but it carries the ideas of social status and leisure. Hedonic consumption is very subjective and depends on personal taste. Ultimately, hedonic value is related to sensory-emotive stimulation that entangles a deeper imaginative meaning. 

According to this definition, I assume that a commercial conveying music in the fore-ground is more suitable to effectively advertise products that belong to the hedonic cate-gory, because its features evoke emotional arousal and foster emotional transport; this allows the customer to be enraptured by the multi sensory experience offered by the commercial, eliciting audience’s emotional arousal and fostering their affection. All things

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being equal, the more salient the music role in the ad the more affect-based the ad is likely to be (Alpert&Alpert, 1991).

H3b: When the product advertised is hedonic, using music in the foreground of the ad, rather than in the background, will be more effective on customer’s attitude and po-tential purchasing behaviour towards the product.

III. HYPOTHESIS OVERVIEW 

This chapter presents a structured overview of all the hypothesis highlighted in the previous section II. Literature Review, and that will be tested in the current research.

Table 3. Hypothesis Overview

H1a In the context of a video commercial, of the five defining features characterising the role of music:Foreground, there is at least one that influences more (or less) the customer’s preference towards the product.

H1b _{In the context of a video commercial, of the five defining features characterising} the role of music:Background, there is at least one that influences more (or less) the customer’s preference towards the product.

H2 _{There is a statistically significant relation between product category (hedonic or} utilitarian) and music preference (foreground or background).

H3a _{When the product advertised is utilitarian, using music in the background of the} ad, rather than in the foreground, will be more effective on customer’s attitude and potential purchasing behaviour towards the product.

H3b _{When the product advertised is hedonic, using music in the foreground of the} ad, rather than in the background, will be more effective on customer’s attitude and potential purchasing behaviour towards the product.

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IV. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 

To be able to dig deeper into the role of music and its effectiveness on customers preference and potential choice across product category, so to be able to test the hy-pothesis proposed, data is collected.  

In this section I will present my research approach showing how the data has been collected and analysed and how the design and methodology chosen go along with my research purpose. This section addresses why, when and how data is collected in order to avoid threats to the validity and reliability of the information. At the beginning of the chapter I will discuss the general approach to this research and architecture of the project. I will then delineate the step by step process of data gathering, explaining why I chose the online survey as best methodology for my research purpose. Afterwards, I will explain how I intend to organise the data and structure the data analysis.  

Among other sources, I referred to research books as main inspiration to write this section (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2012).

IV. i. Research Approach 

The present research follows a deductive approach, referring to all five stages listed by Robson (2002). Hypothesis have previously been deducted from the theory in the lit-erature review section. After expressing the hypothesis in operational terms defining how the variables are to be measured, the aforementioned hypothesis will be tested and ex-amined. As a deductive approach suggests I, the researcher, will be independent of what is being observed to honour the principle of scientific rigour.

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The current study is an explanatory study, aimed to describe a causal relationship between the role of music on customer’s preferences and potential choice. Deductive approach is ideal to chase this purpose (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2012). However, I will not adopt this approach strictly but I will try to combine deductive with an inductive approach in order to grasp all the possible insights from the data collected and give im-portance to possible themes suggested. 

The current research’s question will be answered quantitatively. Usually, quantitative methods are used to determine patterns and relationships between variables, while qualitative methods are used to think about mechanisms between relationship (Saun-ders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2012). In this particular case I will research about the relation between an independent variable (role of music) and a dependent variable (preference of audience and potential choice), hence a quantitative approach will help identifying the patterns between the variables better.

IV. ii. The Experiment

For the purpose of this research new data will be collected through a self-adminis-tered internet-mediated experimental survey questionnaire. Using an online survey con-veys many advantages. First, online survey research will provide access to individuals that might be unreachable through other channels (Garton, Haythornthwaite, & Wellman, 1999). Second, it is a time saving method: an online survey will allow me to reach indi-viduals with common characteristics in a short amount of time, despite possibly being separated by distant geographical locations (Taylor, 2000; Yun & Trumbo, 2000). More-over, survey research will allow me to work on other tasks while collecting the data (Llie-va, Baron & Healey, 2000). Another relevant advantage is the convenience of having

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au-tomated data. (Wright, 2005). In fact through a survey, standardised data is collected, this allows a smoother and efficient data analysis. The survey has been created and hosted on www.Qualtrics.com in English language. Qualtrics.com has been selected as platform for the survey because it provides a set of ideal tools to gather and share infor-mation. Another valid reason to rely on this platform is that the University of Amsterdam provides the opportunity to use a premium account on qualtrics.com, this gives me the chance to rely on several options and advanced tools to implement the survey. Further-more, qualtrics.com architecture is user friendly and it offers the opportunity to conve-niently randomise the treatments. At last, another advantage of using the platform qualtrics.com is that once the data is collected, it can be exported into different formats, of which SPSS is one of them.

Disadvantages of survey research include uncertainty of the validity of the data, sampling issues and concerns regarding design, implementation and evaluation. In the following sections I will explain how I intend to overcome these obstacles. 

The study is aimed to comprehend whether different roles of music may be more or less effective, for distinct product categories, to positively influence customer's prefer-ence. The survey is structured to provide insights on both product categories considered and their relation with music role. The survey consists of two main treatments, presented in the following section.

IV. ii. a. Managing the Treatments

The four treatments that descend from the 2x2 design (two music roles and two product categories) have been merged into two(as shown in tables 4 and 5) in order to allow a direct comparison of the music roles (foreground and background), being a direct

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comparison the primary objective of the current research. 

TREATMENT ONE - HEDONIC VALUE: The first treatment consists of the compari-son of two video commercials for a product which is representative of hedonic consump-tion. One of the two commercials will exhibit music in the foreground, the other in the background. Participants will be asked to watch both the video commercials and after-wards they will be presented several questions regarding their preference and potential choice of one of the two products displayed and to what extent music characteristics in-fluenced this decision.

In order to realise a direct comparison of the two roles of music relevant to the hedo-nic category, I chose perfumes commercials. The reasons for this choice are the follow-ing: perfumes convey all the characteristics of hedonic consumption, they belong to the luxury segment and do not solve any particular functional chore. The impossibility to ad-vertise a scent through a video, led marketers to appeal to the other senses, hence the music component is greatly used in perfume marketing, both in the background and in

Foreground Background

Hedonic Hedonic Value - Foreground Music Hedonic Value - Background Music

Utilitarian Utilitarian Value - Foreground Music Utilitarian Value - Background Music

Table 4. Four Treatments 2x2

TREATMENT ONE : HEDONIC CONSUMPTION

Foreground Music vs. Background Music

TREATMENT TWO : UTILITARIAN CONSUMPTION

Foreground Music vs. Background Music

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the foreground, this allows me to select the commercials among a wide pool of choice. Moreover, perfumes commercials are widely and easily available on the internet.  

After a careful research, the two commercials I chose for the hedonic product catego-ry are: 

1. Foreground Music: Miss Dior - the new film (Official Director’s Cut)  2. Background Music: Dolce & Gabbana The One - (Uncut version)  (the direct link to the videos on Youtube is to be found in IX. Appendix)

1. Foreground Music: Miss Dior commercial portraits a young rich woman (played by the actress Natalie Portman) in a white dress, preparing for her wedding day with an un-certain look on her face. Looking out the window she notices that everyone is waiting for her in a beautiful sumptuous location and she also sees her father who, with an impa-tient look, invites her to not delay further. When the attendant lend her the flowers saying “your flowers, Madame”, she replies “it’s Miss, actually”. While walking down the aisle with her father, he looks at her saying “I’m proud of you”. The uncertainty of her and the impatience of him suggest that the marriage has been combined by the families for pur-poses of financial interest. The dialogues are limited and not product related, the true protagonist of the commercial is the music: Janis Joplin’s “Piece of my Heart” is playing in the foreground. Approaching the fateful moment walking down the aisle, the young woman says “I am sorry dad” and suddenly runs far away from the wedding scene. Without any doubt, Dior commercial conveys messages of independence, feminism, freedom, self-reliance, intelligence, courage, allure, beauty, opulence and luxury. These ideas are fostered by Janis Joplin’s music, who sings “I’m gonna show you, babe, that a woman can be tough” in the foreground of the ad. The music is prevailing in the context: the fast tempo and rhythm, the complex harmonies, the major mode, the high pitch of the song and the lyrics exaggerate the meaning of the commercial and make you feel

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transported and involved by the video scenes. Most important, as per Stout&Leckerby (1988) definition, the music of this commercial is in the foreground, because it presents all the features listed (see Table 2).

2. Background Music: For the background music condition the selected commercial is Dolce & Gabbana - The One. Also in this case the main character is a young rich fa-mous woman (played by Scarlett Johansson) sitting in her changing room, while she is being interviewed and photographed. We do not hear the voice of the interviewer nor do we know which questions she has been posed. All we hear is her voice, answering questions one after another, and a soft instrumental music in the background. The young woman mentions things such as “A girl has several private lives, it keeps the public in-terested”, “Music inspires me, art inspires me, and so does the wind”, “yes I can really sing, but you have to pay me first”, “smell of sunshine is the best, you know what I mean?”, “oh, I’m not looking for a million things, just that one perfect thing, love” , saying this last phrase while she sprays D&G perfume on her neck. The values conveyed by this commercial are very similar to the ones expressed by Miss Dior: autonomy, liberty, comfort, leisure, richness, high living, charm, style and elegance. However, now these values are presented in a very different way, because the music solves a secondary role in the background and accompanies the words of the actress. In this commercial, not the music but Johansson’s words are the real medium who delivers the concepts and mes-sages of the commercial. The slow tempo and rhythm, the simple harmonies and the lack of lyrics suggest that the music does not prevail but it only functions as an acpanist. In particular, as per Stout and Leckenby (1988) definition, the music of this com-mercial is in the background, because it presents all the features listed (see Table 2).

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Dior and Scarlett Johansson for D&G. Both celebrities have the same age (Portman is 37 and Johansson 34) and conducted similar careers. In order to reduce the possible bias, it is important that both the commercials compared include the participation of a celebrity because, as evidence shows, celebrity endorsement is an effective promotional tool. Marketers worldwide believe that the presence of a celebrity can influence advertis-ing effectiveness, brand recognition and recall, purchase intention and behaviour. Prod-uct quality and uniqueness are also influenced by celebrity endorsement (Dean, 2001), this finding is especially relevant for this study, considering that quality and uniqueness of a perfume are hardly verifiable before the consumption of the product. Recently, aca-demics also demonstrated that celebrity endorsement leads to a favourable attitude to-wards the endorsed brand (Till et al., 2008). Spry, Pappu & Cornwell (2011) extended the body knowledge to the area of source credibility, showing that the relationship be-tween endorser credibility and brand credibility is positive. For these reasons, to make sure that both commercials shown involve the presence of a celebrity endorser is of cru-cial importance to limit the bias of this research. In order to minimise the bias of the comparison, both the commercials selected have the same length and disclose the same messages of beauty, luxury, independence, charm.  

In conclusion, the two commercials selected are ideal for the purpose of this study because they allow me to control variables such as presence of a celebrity endorser, time length and delivered message, and at the same time they allow me to analyse and compare the usage of the music for the hedonic product category, in as much as the first commercial, Miss Dior, conveys music in the foreground, communicating the message via a union of music and motion picture, while the second, D&G The One, involves background music that only accompanies the words and story narrated by the main character, whose words are the central focus of the commercial.

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TREATMENT TWO - UTILITARIAN VALUE: The second treatment of the survey is structured similarly to the first one: two video commercials are presented, one with mu-sic in the foreground and the other with mumu-sic in the background. However, now the commercials advertise a product which is representative of utilitarian consumption. Utili-tarian products can to some extent be compared to the so called search products, which are products that customers can evaluate by looking at specific traits and characteristics of the product before buying it (Cui et al., 2012). For these reasons, utilitarian value is less difficult than hedonic value to assess prior the purchase, because their technical and practical functions can be objectively known and chosen before the actual use; while hedonic goods are more difficult to assess objectively prior the experience be-cause they are defined by the customer’s individual taste and experience, which is only defined after the usage. On this account, it is important to mention that when it comes to utilitarian consumption, the information released by the advertisement might be deter-mining of the decisional process and even totally influence the purchase.

To represent utilitarian consumption, I chose breakfast cereals. Considering that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, breakfast cereals solve an important nu-tritional function. Thus, information on the nunu-tritional values can be crucial for the choice of the product.

Specifically, the two commercials I chose for the utilitarian category are:  1. Foreground Music: Weetabix Chocolate Spoonsize - Dubstep

2. Background Music: Peanut Butter Cheerio - Father Friendly 

(the direct link to the videos on Youtube is to be found in IX. Appendix)

Contrary to the previous condition, now both commercials do not involve celebrity endorsement. Here the main focus is on ordinary people and ordinary life scenes.  

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1. FOREGROUND MUSIC: Weetabix commercial shows a 10 years old girl eating cereals in her bedroom. After consuming the product, the girl starts dancing on a dub-step tune in the foreground of the commercial, capturing the attention of the audience. At the end of the commercial, the girl’s friends look at her astonished by so much vitality. The message of the commercial is clearly focused on the energy that springs after eat-ing the advertised product and thus conveys a functional meaneat-ing related to its nutri-tional value. The messages of fun, energy, parenthood and strength are fostered by the music only and no verbal or written message interfere with this. As per Stout&Leckerby (1988) definition, the music of this commercial is in the foreground because it presents all the features listed (see Table 2).

2. BACKGROUND MUSIC: The second video commercial for the utilitarian consump-tion presents music in the background. The central element in this case is thoughts and parental tips recited by a father on an ordinary family morning, while he prepares his children to face a new day. The Cheerio dad describes the advertised product as the “official cereal of dad-hood”, enhancing the idea of being a responsible parent if allowing breakfast with Cheerios. He talks to his children and directly to the camera, addressing the audience. Parts of this dialogue say “Being awesome is not about breaking rules, is about making them”, “Cheerio is for breakfast, but also for lunch, dinner and midnight snack”, “We wouldn’t have it in any other way, because being a dad is awesome, just like new Peanut Butter Cheerio, are awesome. That’s why it’s the official cereal of dad-hood. And this, my friends, this is how to dad.” 

Also in this case the functional meaning is related to the nutritional value of the prod-uct advertised, and the messages conveyed are of fun, vitality, parenthood and strenght, but now the music only adopts a background role, playing along with dad’s words and

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ideas. As per Stout&Leckerby (1988) definition, the music of this commercial is in the background because it presents all the features listed (see Table 2).

Merging the four treatments into two, and questioning participants on these direct comparisons, will allow me to get insights on which music role is more effective for the particular product category considered. All participants have been presented both the treatments (hedonic and utilitarian value) and hence saw all four commercials selected in one whole comprehensive survey (to be found in IX.Appendix). By measuring the same people twice on the same dependent variable I will be able to run a Repeated Measures ANOVA, that tests whether there are any differences between related popula-tion mean scores and will allow me to test Hypothesis 1a and 1b (see Table 3). The ad-vantage of running a Repeated Measures ANOVA over an independent ANOVA is that the first is generally much more powerful, because it allows a further partition of the error term, reducing its size of the variability due to the individual differences between sub-jects, as we are testing the same participants in each group. This leads to a smaller er-ror term, as illustrated below, and a more reliable analysis:

Figure 2: Error Term Independent Samples vs. Repeated Mea-sures ANOVA analysis.  Source: https://statis- tics.laerd.com/statisti-cal-guides

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IV. ii. b. Measures

Questions about the influence of music characteristics on customer’s preferences across product category will be answered with a Five-point Likert-scale (Bruner, 2009). All the questions are shown in IX. Appendix.  

The independent variable is the role of music in video commercial, foreground vs. background. It is measured through the careful selection of video commercials, as ex-plained in the previous section IV. ii. a. Managing the Treatments. It is relevant to men-tion that all four commercials have been selected accordingly to the characteristics pro-posed by Stout and Leckenby (1988), as represented in Table 2. After expressing their preference and hypothetical choice, all participants were asked to what extent these music characteristics had an impact on their purchase choice on a five-point likert-scale giving ‘not at all’, ‘a little’, ‘a moderate amount’, ‘a lot’ and ‘a great deal’. These charac-teristics of music directly relate to the two conditions foreground/background, this will al-low me to comprehend which one of these two roles is more suitable for the considered product category to enhance the preference of the audience towards the product and if some music characteristics have more impact than the other ones on customer’s favourable attitude. The extent to which music features influenced this choice has been measured with rating questions on a matrix grid, varying on a 5-points Likert-scale from “Not at all” to “A great deal”. 

The dependent variable, product preference and purchase intention, is measured through a five-point scale giving ‘definitely would not buy’, ‘probably would not buy’, ‘might buy’, ‘probably would buy’ and ‘definitely would buy’ since it is the most commonly used scale to measure the likelihood of purchase (Day, Gan, Gendall, Esslemont, 1991) with the scale item being ‘would you buy this product?’ (Bruner, 2009).  

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After looking at the selected video commercials, participants have been asked to choose between Miss Dior and D&G The One for the hedonic product category and be-tween Weetabix Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cheerio for the utilitarian product catego-ry, through a multiple choice question.  

Participants have also been asked their opinion whether their choice had been influ-enced by the use of music in the ad. If yes, they have been asked to explain why with their own words. Closed questions have been combined with open questions to give the chance to the participants to express their feelings in their own way, as suggested by Fink (2003).

Finally, in the last part of the survey, participants have been asked questions related to their demographics, namely gender, age and education, to study whether the effect of the roles of music would differ across gender, age and education level. For gender a multiple choice question with two answer categories (male/female) was used. The age will be asked in an open ended question. The education level will be asked through a multiple choice question that includes the following: High school or lower, Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s/PHD Degree.

IV. ii. c Sample Selection and Data Collection

International students and professionals between the age of 18 and 50 are the popu-lation of this study. I decided to limit the participation to this specific age frame in order to reduce the bias that might come from different generational approaches to the music in video commercial, different tastes and and approaches to the music itself. In order to rely on a representative sample and to be able to generalise the conclusions of this study over the population, the main goal is to achieve a sample as large as possible, possibly around 200 - 250 participants.

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Quota sampling and snowball sampling are implemented as recruiting techniques. The two methods combined are ideal because they allow me to ensure that the sample selected represents certain characteristics in the population and at the same time partic-ipants identify others who are similar to themselves, enhancing the homogeneity of the sample group.  

In order to evaluate the research design and to assure high quality of the distributed survey, a pilot test is conducted prior to the main study. On March 1st, 2017 the survey was ready to be tested through the pilot study, 15 participants were recruited for the pilot study only, and they have not been involved then for the data collection process of the main study. Pilot studies can be used in several ways, the most important ones in social science research are the so-called feasibility studies and the pre testing studies. The reason why pilot studies are important is because they might reveal signs of where the study might fail and be biased. Moreover, pilot studies might raise insights regarding the feasibility of the research, the likely response rate, ethical issues, the distribution of the questionnaire and recruitment of participants, the protocols and the questions, whether they are inappropriate or too complicated (van Teijlingen and Hundley, 2002).

After the pilot test participants were also asked to fill a second brief questionnaire on the survey itself that was aimed to find out their opinion on the survey structure. Ques-tions on the length of the survey, on the clarity of the quesQues-tions, on whether some ques-tions were ambiguous or felt uneasy, on whether some major topic has been omitted and on whether the layout was attractive or not (Bell, 2005) have been posed.

In the current research, the pilot study has been used to pre test the survey. Pilot study has been partially assessed online and partially offline, to be able to sit down with the participants and comprehend if the questions and the structure of the survey are too

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complex or easy to be misunderstood. The feedback received has been taken in consid-eration and implemented in the final survey structure. On March 20th, 2017 the survey was distributed to recruited population and deactivated four weeks later, on April 20th, 2017.

The distribution of the survey, including the cover letter, happened through social media (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIN and via personal email. These channels guarantee that the participants reached use internet regularly.  

The survey has been online for a total of 30 days, after that it has been deactivated. Participation to the survey has been completely voluntary, no token or incentive was provided. Participants have been advised that all the responses received would remain anonymous and confidential, this has been clearly stated at the beginning of the ques-tionnaire.

To make sure that the questionnaire is reliable, I carefully chose the wording involved in order for it to be clear, familiar and easily understandable by the participants. Also the visual appearance of the survey has been designed to be simple, this will help me obtain valid responses keeping the participants involved and intrigued (Dillman, 2007). Consid-ering that the study involves internationals it is extremely important to make sure that the questions mean the same to all participants, thus to make sure attention is paid to not only lexical but also idiomatic and experimental meaning (Usunier, 1998). To ensure the reliability of the survey, I asked for direct feedback to peer Master students and PHD students, who kindly informed of how they interpreted the questionnaire and commented on its logic and structure, this allowed me to adjust the questions to be as clear and well-founded as possible.

Background and foreground music in video commercials : a study across product categories