Critical Review on a Working Paper : Effects of background music, voice cues, earcons and gender on psychological ratings and heart rates during product selection on a gift and a mobile phone Web stores Authors: Jason J. Zeng, Emily Y.L. Au and Richard H.Y.So presented by: Rosary Chen

Agenda Introduction Literature Review Motivation and Objectives Experiment I Experiment II Final Conclusion Comments

Introduction Multimedia applications on web stores to enhance consumers’ attention and satisfaction Visual aspects Sounds aspects –background music –pre-recorded human voice –earcons (i.e. non-music, non-voice audio message)

Literature Review Past studies on effects of music on people –Hatta and Nakamura (1991), reported that listening to either classical or pop music can produce a significantly lower self- reported levels of mental stress than no music condition. –In 1997, Cockerton compared the performance of IQ tests between two groups students. The results indicated that the group with background music performed significantly better. –Alpert’s, Kellaris’ etc research showed that music has a significant effect on consumers’ emotion-related response such as pleasure and arousal; and also behavior-related responses such as shopping time and expenditure. –In summary, music is capable of evoking complex affective and behavioral responses in consumers and has significant effects on rated levels of arousal, satisfaction, shopping time as well as expenditure.

Literature Review Past studies on effects of voice cues and earcons –Few studies on this field –People seem to much prefer verbal communication instead of text input/output when they need access information on Web (Aberg & Shahmehri, 2000). –Gaver (1989) concluded that voice cues and earcons increase feeling of direct engagement, and can be applied to enhance the user satisfaction.

Literature Review Past studies on effects between gender and sounds of shoppers –Kellaris and Altsech, 1992 reported males perceived no significant differences in perceived duration on both loud music and soft music, while females perceived the loud music lasted longer than the soft music.

Motivation and Objectives There is not much research has been done on the influences of sounds effects on commercial Web stores. Objectives –Investigate the influence of sound effects (background music, human voice, and earcons) and gender on consumers’ shopping on B2C Web stores. –How these effects interact with one another.

Experiment I Purpose –investigate whether sound effects including music, voice together with earcons and gender show some significant influence on consumers’ shopping upon two B2C Web stores and how these effects interact with one another.

Methods Participants –96 students (48 males and 48 females), –Local HK residents and Cantonese speakers Material –Two Web-based stores (self-made) Gifts Mobile phones

Methods (Conts.) Pre-questionnaires –8 items, basic information about subjects’ computer, Internet and EC experience. Post-questionnaires –Emotional Responses Questionnaire: Pleasure Questionnaire (PQ) and the Arousal Questionnaire (AQ) –The Behavior Questionnaire (BQ) –Evaluation Questionnaire (EQ) –Satisfaction Questionnaire (SQ) –Open Questionnaire (OQ) Measurements during experiment –Bipolar Ratings (BR) of general feelingBipolar Ratings (BR) of general feeling –Heart rate measurement

Methods (Conts.) Independent Variables –Gender: Male/Female –Background music: absence/presence Ten clips (five with slow-tempo, five with fast-tempo) –Human voice: absence/presence Pre-recorded by female Cantonese native speaker –Earcons: absence/presence five kinds of earcons response to different events

Methods (Conts.) Independent variables –Gender: Male/Female –Background music: absence/presence Ten clips (five with slow-tempo, five with fast-tempo) –Human voice: absence/presence Pre-recorded by female Cantonese native speaker –Earcons: absence/presence five kinds of earcons response to different events Dependent variables –PQ, AQ, BQ, EQ, SQ, OQ –score from BR –Heart rate elevation –shopping time and individual time perception error

Hypotheses Pleasure Arousal Behavior Evaluation Satisfaction Shopping time Accuracy of time perception Music: with/without H1 H2 Sound on Female H3 Music: presence earcons: presence Human voice: presence H4 H5 H6

Methods (Cont.) Task –One scenario for gift Web store was to buy one or two gifts with the budget of hk$200 either for themselves or their friends. –Another scenario for mobile Web store was to buy one or two mobile phones with the budget of hk$3,500 for themselves. –At least 10 minutes to make decision for each task

Methods (Cont.) Experimental Design and procedure –Full factorial between-subject design – conditions, 6 subjects each –The heart rate was measured continuously and the score of BR was asked in every 5- minutes time interval.

Results Reliability test –Cronbach’s Alpha >0.7 (one item deleted from arousal questionnaire) Normality test Gift Web store: arousal, behavior questionnaire score, time perception error Mobile phone Web store: pleasure, arousal, behavior, evaluation questionnaire score, time perception error, heart rate elevation

Pleasure Questionnaire --- Gift Web Store Gender Music Gender*Music Gender*Voice Gender*Earcons Female reported significantly higher scores than male in the absence of music, or absence of voice, or absence of earcons Music had significant more positive effect on male

Pleasure Questionnaire --- Mobile Phone Store No significant main effects on PQ Only (music x earcons) interaction was found to be significant

Arousal Questionnaire Gift Web Store –Gender is the only significant factor. Females reported higher score than male (p<0.01). Mobile Phone Store –Music, music*voice have significant effects (p<0.05).

Behavior Questionnaire Gift Web Store –Gender, voice*earcons are significant (p<0.05). –Female reported higher score Mobile Phone Store –Earcons has postive effects

Evaluation Questionnaire Gift Web Store –Gender, music are significant factor (p<0.05). –Male reported higher score in the presence of music or in the presence of voice (p<0.05 ) Mobile Phone Store –Earcons was reported with significantly positive effect

Satisfaction Questionnaire No significant effects were found in both Web stores

Experiment II Effects of sounds on two Web stores were quite different. –Music demonstrated significantly positive effects on male participants’ pleasure, evaluation scores and bipolar ratings only on the gift Web store not on the mobile phone Web store. –Sounds showed different effects on different types of Web stores. Extended work was done to explain these phenomena for the suitability of music for male on various types of Web stores.

Screen shot of Gift Web store’s index page

Screen shot of Mobile phone Web store’s index page

Bipolar rating of general feeling indicator