Music and Responses to Advertising: The Effects of Musical Characteristics, Likeability and Congruency

Abstract

This paper reports an experiment designed to investigate effects of music on responses to advertising. First, this study compares the impact of musical elements (tempo and style) with two subjective variables (musical likeability and congruency). Second, affective influence (likeability) and cognitive influence (congruency) of music are discussed. The empirical findings reported provide evidence that subjective variables are more influential than musical structure. Moreover, the results suggest that music can act simultaneously in affective and cognitive ways. In this situation, the type of involvement (affective or cognitive) is shown as moderating the relative strength of the impact of musical likeability and congruency on advertising responses.