Role of executive attention in consumer learning with background music

This paper examines how the type of background music (vocal vs. instrumental) affects consumers’ cognitive performance depending on individual differences in executive attention (i.e., working memory capacity). Across three experiments, we find that vocal music leads to poorer cognitive and attitudinal outcomes for consumers lower in working memory capacity but does not affect those higher in working memory capacity. However, short-term habituation to background music helps mitigate this negative effect of vocal music on consumer ad recall. Finally, consumer performances on computing discount prices are also affected by music type depending upon whether prices are communicated in verbal or numeric form. Overall, this research lays out an executive-attention based process mechanism explaining when and how background music shapes consumer learning and memory. The outlined theory enriches the literature on music effects as well as immediate-term learning by explicating the role of selective attention in the processing of multi-modal marketing stimuli.