Music congruency in a service setting: The mediating role of emotional and cognitive responses

Abstract

We conducted a field experiment to evaluate the effect of music congruency with the whole atmosphere in a service setting. We adopted a holistic approach and tested Bitner's (1992) model by considering the impact of music congruency on emotional, cognitive responses and behavioural intentions. Specifically, we proposed that emotional responses mediate the effect of music congruency on cognitive responses, whereas the latter mediate the relationship between emotional responses and return intention. We conducted the experiment in a restaurant with two treatment conditions, i.e. congruent and non-congruent music. Our results confirmed the expected mediations. We demonstrated that music congruency leads to low arousal, which creates high pleasure. Pleasure induced by music congruency increases customers' evaluation of environment quality and service quality, which positively affects the customers' return intention.