| Since entering the World Trade Organization, the economy of China has been developed at a high speed. The supermarket, as a new form of sales industry, comes into our life. Many managers in service industry and sales industry find that the service environment is the key factor of gaining competitive advantage. Kotler (1973-1974) the famous marketing master from America is the first people who suggests atmosphere is a marketing concept. Music has been an important element of designing the service atmosphere for the past thirty years. A lot of foreign scholars have done many different studies on this topic that there is a relationship between music and customers'behavior, but there is a gap in this area in China. Although a few domestic scholars have paid attention to this topic, the empirical research is very scarce due to the difficulty of collecting data. At the same time most of foreign researches only focus on one environment element's relationship with customers, few scholars take more than one element in consideration to prove their interactive effects.Therefore this paper puts forward the necessity of studying on the relationship between background music and consumers'behavior on the basis of great literature review and the talk with marketing managers, then we bring up four hypothesizes: background music tempo will significantly affect the pace of in-store traffic flow of supermarket consumers such that the pace under slow-tempo condition will be slower than that under fast-tempo condition; background music tempo will significantly affect the gross sales volume purchased by supermarket customers such that the sales volume under slow-tempo condition is higher than that under fast-tempo condition; there is interactive effect of music tempo and density on the pace of the traffic flow of supermarket shoppers; there is interactive effect of music tempo and density on the gross sales volume purchased by supermarket customers. In order to test these hypothesizes we chose a supermarket of middle size in Changchun province to do a field experiment. We observed 80 customers'pace of their traffic flow and 16 sales volumes of different periods. This study has test the interactive effects of two or more than two elements of environment, so there are two independent variables in our experiment. We make ANOVA analysis by the software named SPSS 16.0.Here are the conclusions of our study:First, background music can significantly affect the pace of the traffic flow of supermarket shoppers such that the pace under slow-tempo condition will be slower than that under fast-tempo condition, which is consisted with that of predecessors (Milliman,1982;Hutt et al.,1980). The managers of supermarket or other similar sales situation can make use of the background music to increase customers'time in store, slow down their pace, offer them more opportunity to touch merchandizes, find their latent demand and make them consume more. As to eating stores such as fast food restaurant and cafeteria, fast-tempo background music is suitable, which may speed up consumers'eating, shorten their time spent in store, and improve the availability of the seats and tables.Second, background music tempo can significantly affect the gross sales volume purchased by supermarket customers such that the sales volume under slow-tempo condition is higher than that under fast-tempo condition, which is consisted with Milliman's (1982) and Eroglu's (2005) conclusions. Furthermore this also explains the differences between Herrington's (1996) results with the two scholars'. The supermarket has its own characteristics, which is buying everything you want at one shop. It almost includes all the daily supplies, as a result, when one want to buy one product, he may find another demand. Slow-tempo background music that relaxes consumers, slow down their pace to look for what they want or they may want will work and increase sales volume.Finally, there is the interactive effect of music tempo and density on the pace of the traffic flow of consumers but not on the gross sales volume. This conclusion gives us a new way to study on the relationship between background music and customers' behavior. We cannot chose music on just one principle that slow tempo music is the best, which can slow down customers'pace and increase sales volume. During the peak hours the sales volume under slow-tempo condition is a little higher than that under fast-tempo condition, but the difference is not significant. In this period there are too many customers in the supermarket, which can make them feel crowding. In turn this feeling can lead avoiding behavior (Hui&Bateson,1991;Michael et al.,1991).Besides this consumers will feel less satisfied with the shopping experiences. If so, why not use fast tempo music to speed up their pace, avoid the crowding, and improve the level of their satisfaction to gain the long-term benefit.This article also proposed some suggestions for the future research:First of all, owing to busy life and hard competition of any industry, that the shopping environment can provide effective shopping and entertainment to consumers is the first principle for all the managers. Now that the environment is so important, not only the academic world but also the business world should pay more attention to different elements in it. For example there need more researches on these elements such as music, color, light, density and scent. Lately some scholars call for the research on the relationship between music or other elements in environment and sales brand (Dorsey,2005; Beverland et al.,2006; Garlin& Owen,2006).Secondly, this paper test the relationship between music and customer behavior only in the supermarket. We can further test this complex relationship in other sales environment such as bank, beauty parlor, fitness centre. These sales environments have their own characteristic and their customers are different. So how does the music affect consumers'behaviors? At the same time there is lack of higher level ones in present researches such as strategy problems. For example, there need more researches on the effect of music on consumers during a period, such as customer satisfaction and loyalty.Thirdly, most of present researches focus on the dimensions of the music, such as tempo, volume, and preference. There are few researches on different kinds of customers. The difference in age, gender, education and life style will affect the customers'awareness of music and the preference of music type, which will certainly affect the relationship between music and customers'behavior. Yalch and Spangenberg (1990) found that consumers in different ages will like different kind of music. So we can study on the difference of the relationship between music and customers of different ages.All these are the directions for domestic scholars to study in the future and I hope there are more and more people contribute to this field. |
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