The effect of congruity between background music language and brand culture on consumer behavior
Authors: Zhang Hui , Wei Wanyi , Cao Yingping 
Published: June 2024

Numerous research have explored how musical elements affect consumer behavior in the retail scenario. But this claim has not been fully proven in the online shopping scenario, which has become one of the current mainstream consumption methods. Some researchers have stressed the value of musical congruity, the majority of their discussions have focused on the structural characteristics (rhythm, volume, genre, etc.) or affective characteristics (style, familiarity, valence, etc.), and the cultural characteristics (nation, territory, language, etc.) of music seem to be less discussed. This study focuses on the different music languages to explore the influence of the context effect brought by the cultural characteristics of music on consumer behavior. Language variations in music are primarily represented in the lyrics. The study aims to explore how music enhances the online shopping experience by influencing users' cognitive and emotional responses. It also provides guidance on music selection for e-commerce brands to use music strategically to promote goods consumption.In this study, we simulated the current mainstream e-commerce shopping websites to make online shopping pages of sneakers and selected the music (music with Chinese lyrics, music with English lyrics) on the mainstream music platform charts as experimental materials. The experiment recruited 30 participants (15 females; all of them have online shopping experience); they were divided into three groups (no music, music with Chinese lyric, music with English lyric) and asked to choose a pair of sneakers for themselves from randomly given goods (Chinese brands *8, European and American brands *8) under different background music. We captured the participants' browsing duration, trajectory, and focus position with the eye tracker. Participants' cognitive responses (product purchase intention ranking, product evaluation, music experience), emotional response (PAD emotion), and final behavioral response (direct purchase, shopping cart addition, sharing, collection) were collected through questionnaires.According to the experimental data's T-test, from the perspective of brand, when the music language and brand culture are consistent, the sharing rate of goods will increase. From the perspective of music, goods that have the same nation with background music will get a higher share rate. Compared with the environment without music, the user's pleasure and arousal are significantly improved under both Chinese songs and European and American songs.Our research shows that congruity between music language and brand culture leads to higher levels of pleasure and significantly affects online consumer behavior. When the music culture is consistent with the brand, the rate at which consumers share the goods increases. The pleasant user experience brought by musical congruity increases consumers' evaluation of the cognitive response of the product, thus positively affecting consumers' purchase intention. The experimental results provide new insights into music selection in the online shopping scene in the field of auditory marketing. It enriches the existing literature on musical congruity and cultural characteristics.