Effects of background music tempo on the behavior and emotional status of supermarket customers

Abstract

Background music has been used to improve customer behavior by improving emotional and behavioral characteristics. The present research examines the effects of music tempo of two language songs on customer shopping behavior. A survey was conducted at Arpico Super Center Kandy comprising with five experimental treatment viz no music, high tempo English song, low tempo English song, high tempo Sinhala song, and low tempo Sinhala song. The response of 30 randomly selected customers were evaluated for each type of treatments and in total 150 customers were interviewed. Overall, the study reveals that significant variations on customer behavior are found among the music tempo particularly in English and Sinhala songs (p < 0.05). Lower tempo music of both languages have positively affected customer behavior resulted in the highest level of pleasure, arousal, and satisfaction after purchase. On the other hand, a considerable number of customers neither attracted by the tempo nor the language of music. Thus this study suggests that maintaining a lower level of music tempo will encourage the majority of the customer behaviors thereby could be used as a strategy to improve sales volume.