Music and consumer behaviour

Abstract

Abstract The commercial and industrial uses of music (see Bruner 1990; Gardner 1985a) account for billions of dollars worldwide, involved with such diverse activities as honouring royalty payments for using music in TV advertisements, installing music systems in shops, or promoting new pop music records and CDs. Given the frequency with which people are exposed to music on the radio or in shops or television advertisements, it is possible to argue that such commercial uses constitute one of the principal sources of our everyday exposure to music in the Western world. This remains the case despite the existence of pressure groups such as Pipedown in the UK, and arguments that commercial uses of music may have negative effects (e.g. Englis and Pennell 1994), be less appropriate than silence (Olsen 1994), and at times constitute noise pollution (cf. Hopkins 1994).