Effect of Background Music Tempo and Playing Method on Shopping Website Browsing

Background music is one of the critical factors that affect browsers’ behavior on shopping website. This study adopted a laboratory experiment to explore the effects of background music tempo and playing method on cognitive response in an online store. The independent variables were background music tempo (fast vs. slow) and playing method of music (playing the same music continuously, re-playing the same music while browsing different web pages, and playing different music while browsing different web pages). The measures of the shifting frequency between web pages, perceived browsing time, and recalling accuracy of commodity were collected. Results indicated that participants had more shifting frequency and shorter perceived browsing time for fast music tempo than for slow music tempo. The effect of music tempo on recalling accuracy was not significant. Continuous playing method and re-playing method had similar shifting frequency and perceived browsing time. Different method had more shifting frequency, longer perceived time, and less recalling accuracy. Continuous playing had greater accuracy than re-playing method and different method. The findings should help in manipulating background music for online shopping website.

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