Effects of background music endings on consumer memory in advertising

Abstract

Background music is widely used in advertising to attract audiences' attention. However, no research to date has considered the effect of background music endings on consumer memory for advertised products and messages. Across two experiments, the present research shows that background music that ends abruptly (i.e., truncated ending) distracts consumers' attention, reducing memory for both products and messages, compared to background music that ends with a note in the chord of the dominant tonality (i.e., regular ending) or that concludes with a fading-out ending.