participants. The rating scales were used to measure
the perceived emotions of the cards, how much
people like the cards and purchase intention.
Disparities across groups, cards, music types were
tested using an SPSS partial factorial ANOVA. Based
on the data collected, music can influence consumers’
emotions and eventually affects their purchase
intention. The study found that music structured as
"happy" made listeners feel more positive, while
"sad" music made listeners feel less positive.
Furthermore, the purchase intention has negative
relationship with consumers’ emotions(r = -0.355,
p < 0.05). As such, the sadder the consumers feel, the
higher possibility of them buying the greeting cards
for friends. Additionally, the music backgrounds
show great impact on purchase intension (F = 3.55,
p < 0.05). Cards with sad music background are more
likely to be bought as compared to that with happy
music background. However, cards with happy music
and those without music show similar impact on
purchase intention. Sad music shows distinctive
impacts as compared to no music (p = 0.06). Hence,
it shows that different music category can affect
consumers’ purchase intention, and sad music in
certain senario like buying greeting cards for remote
friends has greater influence on enhancing purchase
intention. The study done by Williman in 1986 had
also shown the impact of music on consumers’
purchase intention. When restuarants played slow-
tempo background music, consumers tend to stay
longer while eating the similar amount of foods, and
more alcoholic beverages were drank (Milliman,
1986).
Though this study has investigated music
structure including beats and rhythm, there are other
factors like lyrics, artistic interpretations, associations
with personal memories, genres and periods of music
are not involved in this study. As such, the
understanding about the impact of music on
consumers’ behaviors might not be holistic (Zhang,
2013).
The study chose some big and popular
supermarkets, including Dalian Hualian Supermarket
Heishijiao Store and Walmart Xueyuan Store. The
author chose 45 people per supermarkets at the exit
who just finished shopping. Eventually, 306 surveys
were collected. Before designing the questionnaires,
the authors had observed the music backgrounds of
the 8 supermarkets, and the behaviors of different age
groups of consumers. Interview was done to have
deeper understanding about consumers’ feelings and
change of behaviors to provide ideas for the
qustionnaires. In order to ensure the generality, the
questionnaires were released in the morning and
afternoon of both the weekdays and weekends. As
such, consumers from different genders, age groups,
occupations, education background and economic
status were all involved in this survey. Rating scales
are used to ask the feelings like anxiety and
excitement when the consumers visit the
supermarkets. The data collected used SPSS to do the
final statistic analysis.
Based on the final results, background music has
a postive relationship with consumers’ positive
emotions, with coefficient 0.781. It means consumers
will have more positive emotions in shopping when
the background music is more accepted by the
consumers. It explains that in the survey, consumers
who have better comments of the background music
are more likely to feel happy and excited. The more
positive consumers' shopping emotions are, the more
likely they are to engage in purchase approach
behavior, with a correlation coefficient of 0.678. It is
represented by the happy and excited consumers who
will stay longer in the supermarkets and have more
interaction with other consumers or staffs. As such,
the purchase intention is enhanced. This
oberservation align with the research done by Yi, F.,
& Kang, J., which indicates that background music
encourages approach behavior by increasing
satisfaction, as such consumers are more inclined to
stay in the shopping malls and explore (Yi & Kang,
2019).
Furthermore, background music also shows a
negative relationship with negative emotions, with
coefficient -0.565. As such, consumers will have
more negative emotions about shopping when they
dislike the music greatly. Hence, when consumers
think the volume is too high or they dislike the types
of music, they may feel annoyed. When the emotions
are negative, approach behavior is inhibited, and the
correlation coefficient between the two is -0.289. As
such, anxious or annoyed consumers will tend to stay
shorter in the supermarkets and are unwilling to
interact with others, leading to weaker purchase
intention.
Additionally, background music shows positive
relationship with consumers’ approach behavior, with
coefficient 0.490. It means when the music is
favourable, consumers will have greater purchase
intention.
However, though music can enhance the postive
emotions, it is not able to adjust the negative emotion.
It is because even though the music might not be
favourable of some groups, they tend to think that
they should bear it as they are in a public areas and
the music is for other groups. Considering that the
research was done in China, the economic