본 연구는 체험 마케팅(experience marketing)의 한 부분이자 감각 마케팅의 일환으로 색과 음악의 조화가 소비자 반응에 미치는 영향에 대하여 조사하였다. 구체적으로 웹페이지에 사용된 색과 음악의 다감각적 상호작용 효과가 웹사이트 평가에 미치는 영향을 살펴보았다. 또한 색과 음악이 유도한 의미가 서로 부합할 때 소비자 반응에 어떠한 영향을 미치는 지, 그리고 이 관계를 설명하기 위해 내재된 기제로써 처리 유창성의 역할은 무엇인지에 대해서 알아보고자 하였다. 연구 를 위하여 4개의 가상 e-book 웹사이트를 제작하였으며, 웹사이트에 대한 평가 시 주요 고려사항인 ``지각된 다운로드`` 속 도에 영향을 주는 웹사이트 색과 음악에 관하여 연구하였다. 소비자는 안정감을 느낄 때 지각된 다운로드 속도를 빠르게 인지한다. 이에 더 많은 안정감을 유도한다는 파란색과 그렇지 않은 노란색을 비교하고, 안정감을 많이 유도하는 느린 음 악과 적게 유도하는 빠른 음악을 비교 하였다. 더불어 각각의 색과 음악을 서로 교차하여 색과 음악의 상호작용으로 인해 안정감를 느끼는 정도에 어떤 변화가 있는지를 보고자 하였다. 피 실험자들이 4가지 실험조건 중 한 개의 자극물에 노출 되어 이를 체험하도록 한 후 설문지에 응답하는 실험을 통해 자료를 수집하였다. 본 연구의 결과, 첫째, 색과 음악이 ``편암함`` 이라는 의미상 부합이 일어날 경우, 즉 파란색과 느린 음악이 만났을 경우 (부합하지 못한 경우에 비해) 실험자들은 웹사이트의 지각된 다운로드 속도를 보다 빠르게 인지하였고, 그로인해 웹사이 트에 대한 태도와 추천의도를 보다 좋게 평가하였다. 둘째, 편안한 색과 편안한 음악의 안정감 차원에서의 의미상의 부합 은 처리유창성을 유도하였고 이렇게 유도된 처리유창성은 색과 음악의 상호작용효과가 웹사이트의 지각된 다운로드 속도, 웹사이트에 대한 태도, 웹사이트 추천의도에 미치는 영향을 매개하였다. 종합하면, 색과 음악의 다감각적 일치를 유도하 면 이로 인하여 발생하는 처리유창성이 제품 정보를 보다 쉽게 처리하도록 도와주며, 이러한 유창성의 효과는 제품에 대 한 보다 긍정적인 평가를 야기하였다.
Recently, sensory marketing is gaining attention as a novel way of connecting brands to customers (Gobe 2009, Peck and Childers 2008). A paucity of studies in this area focuses on investigating the interplays between senses (Hoegg and Alba 2007, Krishna, Elder, and Caldara 2010) rather than examining the effect of a single sense in isolation (Krishna, Lwin, and Morrin 2010, Peck and Shu 2009, Meyers-Levy and Zhu 2010). Consumers naturally process information utilizing all the senses in unison (Krishna 2010, Elder and Krishna 2010). This multi-sensory nature of perception leads to an important research agenda of investigating the impacts of synergies and interferences between the senses on brand evaluations and preferences (Hoegg and Alba 2007). For example, when visual and auditory stimuli compete for attention, consumers` attention could be divided in between so the senses function as interference to each other (Bonnel and Hafter 1998). In contrast, semantic congruence between smell and touch could create synergy and lead to more positive evaluation of products (Krishna, Elder, and Caldara 2010). The sensory research that examined each sense in isolation has shown that color affects product evaluations (Deng, Hui, and Hutchinson 2010, Gorn et al. 2004) so does music (Zhu and Meyers-Levy 2005, Meyers-Levy and Zhu 2010). In this study, we document the synergistic effect of multisensory semantic congruence between color and music. We manipulate hue dimension of color and tempo of music to activate a specific semantic meaning and show that when the two senses align on the dimension of the particular semantic meaning they enhance product evaluations. In the context of e-book site evaluation, the semantic association between color and music led to more favorable perceived download speed, web attitude and intended web recommendation. Processing fluency mediated the effect of semantic congruence between color and music. 250 undergraduates were asked to review an e-book site and provide their opinion on it. We manipulated tempo of music and hue of color to induce feeling of relaxation. Adapted from Gorn et al. (2004), the participants were introduced to a front page of an e-book site and asked to click a featured e-book, followed by a full screen of the downloading screen with assigned color and music. The downloading screen was remained on for a while(17.5 seconds) before the book information popped up on the next page. Following the literature, we used blue 240 (vs. yellow 60) color with the same chroma and value levels of 100% extracted from the HSB color model. The background music featured Bach`s Jesu, Joy of Man`s Desiring and played at a slow (vs. fast) tempo of 130% (vs. 70%) speed of original music to elicit more (vs. less) relaxed feelings (Gorn et al. 2004, Mehta and Zhu 2009, Pham et al. 2011). At last, participants responded to the dependent measures of feelings of relaxation, perceived download speed, and attitudes and recommendation intention toward the website. A 2 (color: blue vs. yellow) × 2 (music: slow vs. fast) between-subjects ANOVA yielded a significant interaction effect of color and music on the perceived download speed F(1, 246) =18.841, p < .01, Mblue, slow=6.860, Mblue, fast=3.586, Myellow, slow=5.144, Myellow, fast=3.974), attitudes (F(1,246)=9.603, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 5.162, Mblue, fast= 3.960, Myellow, slow= 4.511, Myellow, fast= 4.012), and recommendation intention (F(1,246)=13.339, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 5.877, Mblue, fast= 3.597, Myellow, slow= 4.657, Myellow, fast= 3.828) toward the website. The main effects of color and music were also significant. Participants who were exposed to the blue background screen reported faster perceived download speed (F(1,246)=7.505, p < .01, Mblue = 5.223, Myellow = 4.559), better attitudes toward the website (F(1,246)=6.971, p < .01, Mblue = 4.561, Myellow= 4.261), and higher recommendation intention of the website (F(1,246)=6.191, p < .01, Mblue = 4.737, Myellow = 4.242) than those who viewed the yellow screen. Participants listened to the slow music showed higher means than those with fast music (for download speed F(1,246)=84.109, p < .01, Mslow = 6.002, Mfast = 3.780; for attitude F(1,246)=56.274, p < .01, Mslow = 4.837, Mfast= 3.986; for recommendation intention F(1,246)=61.170, p < .01, Mslow = 5.267, Mfast = 3.712). Planned contrasts revealed that when the participants listened to slow music, blue color results in quicker perceived download speed(F(1,122)=29.594, p < .01), more favorable web-attitude (F(1,122)=17.221, p < .01), and greater recommendation intention(F(1,122)=15.667, p < .01) than yellow. For both participants with the blue background and ones with the yellow background, slow music induced greater perceived quickness (for blue F(1,117)=104.284, p < .01; for yellow F(1,129)=10.664, p < .01), more favorable webattitude (for blue F(1,117)=49.346, p < .01, for yellow F(1,129)=11.047, p < .01), and greater recommendation intention (for blue F(1,117)=57.351, p < .01, for yellow F(1,129)=9.989, p < .01). Two way ANOVAs also yielded a significant color × music interaction effect on feelings of relaxation (F(1, 246)=9.860, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 7.015, Mblue, fast= 4.825, Myellow, slow= 6.000, Myellow, fast= 4.922) and processing fluency (F(1, 246)=6.787, p=.01, Mblue, slow= 5.158, Mblue, fast = 4.328, Myellow, slow= 4.547, Myellow, fast= 4.385). There were significant main effects of color and music. Participants in the blue color condition perceived the download as faster (F(1,246) =6.729, p =.01, Mblue = 5.920, Myellow = 5.461) and the website as more fluent (F(1,246)= 4.653, p < .01, Mblue = 4.743, Myellow = 4.466) than did participants in the yellow color condition. Perceived quickness of the download (F(1,246)=85.250, p < .01, Mslow = 6.507, Mfast = 4.874) and fluency (F(1,246)=14.958, p < .01, Mslow = 4.853, Mfast = 4.359) were greater for participants with slow music than for those with fast music. Contrasts revealed that for people exposed to slow music, felt relaxation (F(1,122)=17.980, p < .01) and fluency (F(1,122)=14.302, p < .01) were greater with a blue screen than with a yellow screen. For both participants in blue and yellow condition, slow music induced more feelings of relaxation than fast music (F(1,129)=16.647, p < .05). When participants viewed blue screen, listening to slow music activated more fluency than listening to fast music (F(1,117)=19.959, p < .01) In order to test whether the semantic congruency from color and music in feelings of relaxation leading to perceptual fluency mediated the interaction effect of color and music on website evaluation, we followed the bootstrap procedure for indirect effects in multiple mediator models (Preacher and Hayes 2004, 2008). The analyses confirmed that the influence of color × music interaction led to enhanced feelings of relaxation, and then to processing fluency, and, as a result, to less perceived download wait time (95% confidence interval of .0108 to .1991 based on 5,000 bootstrap samples with bias corrected sample estimate), more positive attitudes(CI=.013 to .102), and more favorable recommendation intention (CI=.002 to .149). In this paper, we extended previous research on sensory perception which had typically focused on investigating the effects of sensory modalities singularly to multiple sensory research by examining the effect of cross-modal cues simultaneously, and suggested substantive application opportunities toward marketing of an website in which perceived quickness of download speed is an important feature to manage to enhance purchase intention. In addition, our results based on semantic association between color and music revealed the underlying psychological process of synergy created from the integration of sensory elements. The mediating role of fluency could be applied to future research investigating other multi-sensory crossmodal combinations.