Carvalhal Final Projet

Running head: AUDIENCE PERSUASION AND GENRE OF COMMERCIAL MUSIC

Audience Persuasion and Genre of Commercial Music: How Much Does it Matter?

Daniela Carvalhal

University of South Carolina Upstate

AUDIENCE PERSUASION AND GENRE OF COMMERCIAL MUSIC

Abstract

This paper will discuss music in commercials but more specifically, it will discuss

different genres of music in commercials and if the genres have an influence on the

persuasiveness levels. This project used the Elaboration Likelihood Model to see the

connections between the audience and the music. They discovered that there is a

connection between the genre of music in a commercial and whether or not it is

persuasive.

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The purpose of this paper is to study if the genre of music in commercials can

persuade the audience or viewer to purchase a certain company’s product. Imagine a

scenario where you are watching television and the sound is on mute. You glance at the

television to see a commercial and have little interest in it because there is no sound so

you look away. Now imagine a time where you have the volume on and the same

commercial appears. This time though a song is playing in the background of the

commercial. This scenario creates many research questions. By hearing a song, what is

the likelihood that you would be more interested in purchasing the product than without

hearing the music? Now, what if it was the same commercial but a different song

playing? Would you still want the product or would it have swayed you otherwise?

The hypothesis of this study is that the type of music being played in commercials

can have an influence on persuading viewers to want to go out and purchase a company’s

product. This study is important and useful because advertising companies need to know

what style of music has a higher rate on swaying their target audience to want to go out

and purchase their product. Many companies may already have music playing but it may

not be the right kind of music for their target audience. Companies want advertising

agencies that create these commercials to increase their demand and profit with their

commercial advertisements, so studying whether music in commercials can be persuasive

can be highly beneficial to these agencies. If the predicted hypothesis is supported,

companies will be able to gain more profit due to having certain music in their

commercials. If companies are making more money then the economy is growing

stronger.

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In order to conduct this research, the Elaboration Likelihood Model will be used

to analyze if message-irrelevant factors such as music will hold sway on a peripheral

path. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), a dual processing theory, is one of the

most popular theories used to explain the audiences’ persuasion process (SanJosé-

Cabezudo, Gutiérrez-Arranz, & Gutiérrez-Cillán, 2009). The Elaboration Likelihood

Model looks at the message elaboration, which is the main route of persuasion, and this

creates a significant positive or negative attitude change. In order for the model to work,

you need unbiased audiences that have the capabilities of judging strong arguments.

According to Martín-Santana, Muela-Molina, Reinares-Lara, & Rodriguez-Guerra

(2015), when music is combined with words, commercials have the highest effectiveness

rating. When music and co-texts such as talking and visual aids, are combined, it is

attractive to so many different senses. There are two levels of signification in this

relationship between music and co-texts. This project seeks to expand the knowledge of

music effects by focusing on whether the types of music can persuade and influence the

audience to go out and get the product viewed in the commercial.

Literature Review

Music can be used as a valuable tool in advertising (Stout, Leckenby, & Hecker,

1990). Not only is it a valuable tool, but in multimedia music it is used to influence

people everyday (Zander, 2006). Music has the power and capability to modify or

change someone’s perspective. It has always been a means of persuasion in everyday life.

Advertisers, churches, schools, and other places all use music in order to gain attention of

an audience.

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Musical Influence

Music can be found everywhere you go. Whether you are in a store, driving in

your car, or even walking down the street, we are surrounded by music and sounds.

Sometimes when you hear this music it can cause you to feel a certain way. When music

is related to emotional reactions, sometimes the reactions are intentional and sometimes

they are incidental (Travis, 2013). As stated before, music is a powerful tool in

commercial advertising. It can create or destroy a brand. A brand is the identity of

something that separates it from other entities (Cramphorn, 2014). If the audience likes

the music being heard, it can create positive attitudes towards the brand (Stout, Leckenby,

& Hecker, 1990). Similarly, if they dislike the music, it can have a negative effect on the

audience which would then lead to a negative influence. Music can also enhance the

memory the audience has of the product (Hyun, Jai, & Jung, 2014). Music can create a

stronger recall of the commercial, which will then enhance positive attitudes towards the

brand (Hyun, Jai, & Jung, 2014). This has to do with peripheral influences, meaning the

music being advertised will associate itself with memory and then will influence you to

get the product through classical conditioning (Alpert, Alpert, & Maltz, 2005).

Elaboration Likelihood Model

The theory that will be used in this research is the Elaboration Likelihood Model,

developed by Richard E. Petty and John Cacioppo. ELM (Elaboration Likelihood

Model) is a dual processing theory that describes the change of attitudes. The model

explains the variety of ways to process stimuli and what their outcomes on attitude

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change are. There are two main routes of persuasion: the central route and the peripheral

route.

The peripheral route happens when the audience chooses whether to agree with

the message based on cues besides just the strength of the ideas in the message

(Elaboration Likelihood Model). The central route is when the listener is persuaded by

the message itself. The peripheral route is the person watching the commercial agrees

with it because of the scenery in the background appears professional. The central route

is when the listener agrees with the commercial because the facts that are being spoken.

Advertising Strategies

Companies have to come up with new strategies to get their product “out there”

because advertising is a competitive field. Music seems to be a great strategy for

advertising but there are also other effective ways to advertise products. Advertising

strategies are meant to be persuasive and are aimed to grab the conscious and attention of

the targets (Bermejo 2013). Online advertising is becoming a very popular and effective

strategy, having become $26 billion dollar industry for advertisers (Thomaidou,

Liakopoulos, & Vazirgiannis, 2014). One online strategy is search-based advertising.

This is when someone goes to a search engine, types something in, and your company is

at the top of the results page. Certain search engines will allow companies to pay for

their ad to be on top. Unlike “natural” results the paid advertisements will say “ad”

beside them. According to Thomaidou , (2014), search engines are still the largest online

advertising strategies in revenue.

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Another popular strategy is environmental advertising, more specifically billboard

advertising. Billboards should look creative and have a slogan. Having a slogan has a

high correlation with audience mind involvement (Hanzaee, Sammaknejad, & Sadeh,

2015). Having these characteristics on a billboard will help the viewer remember the

billboard and what is being advertised.

Celebrity promotions are also a popular strategy in advertising. You can see

celebrity promotions all over social media, such as Instagram. For example, FitTea is a

detox tea company that is constantly using celebrity endorsements online, such as Kylie

Jenner. Choosing which celebrity is a huge deal to advertisers because of the amount of

money being paid for their participation in the advertisement (Choi & Rifon 2012).

Celebrities are a great advertising tool to enhance brand image (Choi & Rifon 2012).

One great example of this is Matthew McConaughey and his commercials for Lincoln

cars. Matthew McConaughey is seen in a variety of Lincoln commercials as a way to

persuade people who like the actor to want the same car that he is driving.

Persuasion

Persuasion is a powerful method used in everyday life to sway someone’s

decision to benefit your own, which can be used in both rationale and emotional contexts.

Whether a company is trying to persuade someone to buy their product or students are

trying to persuade a teacher not to give a test, people are always persuading others.

When persuasion has succeeded you know the advertisement was able to solidify a solid

return on an investment (Verlegh, Fransen, & Kirmani, 2015). Persuasion is useful but

according to Eisend (2015) if the person is aware of persuasive tactics they are less likely

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to want the product. Knowing that they are trying to be persuaded makes it less likely to

be able to persuade them. Because music is not thought of as a direct persuasive strategy

by consumers, it can be a very effective persuasive tool for advertisers.

Methods

Participants

A total of 100 participants between the ages of 18-37 were surveyed for this

study. 62% of the participants were female and 38% were male. 22% were from the ages

of 18-22, 63% were from the ages of 23-27, 8% were the ages of 28-32, and 7% were the

ages of 33-37. There are two different surveys being used in this research, survey 1 and

survey 2. The participants are a mixture of anonymous people from the online survey

polls and various work environments. The online surveys was conduced using the

website Tyeform.com, then shared on various social media websites. There is a mixture

of participants in order for the sample to be more generalizable. Half of the participants

took survey 1 that included music in the commercial they watched and the other half took

survey 2 that did not include music in the commercial they watched. The two groups will

be classified as n=1 for survey 1 and n=2 for survey 2.

The participants were required to watch the same commercial but the difference is

one commercial had sound and the other was mute. After viewing the commercial they

were asked to fill out a survey about their experience. In order to make sure that there

was no chance of a bias by viewing different commercials they viewed the same one. The

commercial that was played was a recent (2016) commercial for wireless Beats

Headphones. The song being played was the classic Disney song from the movie Pinchiio

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called “I’ve Got No Strings.” In this commercial there were a variety of celebrities

including; Pharrell Williams, DJ Khalid, Nicki Minaj, Michael Phelps, Lizza (vine star)

and others. In the commercial you see all the different celebrities listening to Beats

Wireless Headphones in their everyday lives, while the “I’ve Got No Strings” song is

playing. You see them walking down the streets, eating, holding babies, working out,

and dancing.

Statistics sex N Valid 100

Missing 0Percentiles 25 1.0000

50 2.000075 2.0000

Instruments

The Perceived Message Sensation Value (PMSV) Scale was used to measure how

the participants connected to the message being shown. The PMSV is a 17-item scale

from Everett and Palmgreen (Palmgreen, Stephenson, Everett, Baseheart, & Francies,

2002). The measure was created to touch on sensory, affective, and arousal responses

participants have to the messages a semantic differential scales using bipolar pairs.

Examples of this would be “not creative-creative”, “strong sound effects-weak sound

effects”, and “powerful impact- weak impact”. All the scales will use a 7-point Likert-

type scale to measure the responses.

Also at the end of each survey there were three questions regarding if the genre of

music was different and how that would affect their purchasing of the product. The

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Statisticsage N Valid 100

Missing 0Mean 3.3900Std. Deviation 1.12721Minimum 2.00Maximum 6.00Percentiles 25 3.0000

50 3.000075 4.0000


questions that were asked at the end surveys were; I am likely to purchase this product,

the song in the commercial made me more interested in purchasing the product than I

would have been if the song had not been playing, and 3. I would be more likely to

purchase the product if a different song was playing? In order to test reliability, the

survey was tested using the Cronbach’s Alpha. The results were that the test is reliable

with Chronbach’s Alpha of .797.

Reliability StatisticsCronbach's Alpha N of Items

.797 20

Results

Preliminary Analysis

In the beginning of analyzing the data, we conducted a t-test to see if there were

any differences between males and females participants with regards to the PMSV scale

and the three questions at the end of the surveys. There were not any huge differences

between male and female participants in the last three questions of the survey regarding

the genre of music (t= -.069, df= 98, p>.05) (t= -.994, df=. 98, p<.05) (t=-.656, df=98,

p>.05). These findings were not all that unpredictable, because we assumed that the sex

would not have a big influence on how persuasive the commercial was to the viewer.

However, with the one-way ANOVA test, we did discover differences between sex with

regards to the previous mentioned questions (F=.005, df=99, p<.05) (F=.989, df=99,

p>.05) (F=.430, df=99, p>.05).

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Hypothesis and Research Questions

For this study there were three research questions. RQ1 was, by hearing a song,

what is the likelihood that you would be more interested in purchasing the product than

without music? RQ2 was, what if the same commercial was playing a different song from

a different genre? RQ3 was, would you still want the product or would it have swayed

you otherwise if it were a different genre?

6 out of the 100 people gave the answer number “1” on a strongly disagree to

strongly agree 7-point scale, on if they would purchase the product after viewing the

commercial, which is RQ1. Because they gave a 1 that means that 6 out of 100 people

would not purchase the product. 10 out of the 100 people put a “5”, so then 10 out of a

100 people would be in the middle of maybe purchasing the product, after viewing the

commercial. Then 84 of the people put an answer between 1-5. As you can see in the

table below the majority of people gave the answer “2” for the first research question.

For the RQ2 which is looking at if the commercial was playing a different song

the majority of people put the answer “6” which means there is a extremely high chance

that they would purchase the product still if a different song was playing.

For RQ3, which is asking if they would still want to purchase the product if it was

a different genre playing. The majority of the people put the answer “6” which means

there is also a high chance that even if there was a different genre of music playing in the

background they would still be inclined to purchase the product. In the chart below you

are able to see the mean, median, mode, std. deviation, minimum, maximum, and

percnetiles of the answers for the three research questions.

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The final test that was run was the Pearson’s Correlation test in order to see if

there were any connections or correlations between the different factors. In the table

below you can see the correlations.

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Discussion and Conclusion

The purpose of this research study was to see if the genre of music in a

commercial could have a negative or positive effect on the persuasive value it has on the

audience to purchase their product. The study showed that there is a high correlation

between the genre of music and whether or not a person would purchase a product from a

commercial. So the hypothesis was found true. Many people however found the

commercial viewed closer to the side of being boring then interesting, which raises

questions how can a commercial still be persuasive even if the audience finds it boring.

Limitations

The main limitation of this study was the time frame. This study was conducted

only in a three-month period with no prior brainstorming. In order to fully have an

understanding on how different genres of music and persuasion works, this study should

have been conducted in a bigger time frame. Other limitations would be gaining access

to participants. I had a hard time finding enough participants to be a part of this

quantitative study in a timely manner that would still allow me to run tests through all the

data multiple times.

Future Research

As mentioned before a future topic related to my study would be how can a

commercial still be persuasive even if the audience finds it uninteresting? I also think

that the study could be re-conducted with a larger variety of commercials and commercial

music genres for the audience to view. I only used one type of genre, which was Disney

music in my study. In order to truly know if different genres have different effects on

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how persuasive a commercial can be, there needs to be studies tested with different music

and different visual aids.

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