Results May Vary: Overcoming Variability in Consumer Response to Advertising Music

Although listening to music seems effortless, it actually involves many separate psychological mechanisms. This article describes and extends the multimechanism framework proposed by Juslin and colleagues, highlighting how the operation of psychological mechanisms leads to two general types of variability in consumer response to advertising music. First, the risk of between‐consumer variability (individual differences) in musical response is moderate or high for most mechanisms, and it often depends on each individual's particular history of exposure to music (listening biography). Second, within‐consumer variability occurs when different mechanisms have contrasting effects, so that an individual consumer's musical response is often mixed (e.g., guilty pleasures, bittersweet feelings, pleasurable sadness). Both types of variability can negatively impact advertising objectives (message reception, recall, acceptance, brand attitudes, etc.). The article offers preliminary suggestions for how marketers can use a multimechanism approach to successfully incorporate music in commercials and reduce the risk of unanticipated consumer responses. It ends with proposals for further research.