Update

Hello!

I wanted to give you all an update on what I have been doing these last few weeks!

Study

I conducted my first official study two weeks ago where I played music in the student store over the span of 3 days.

The experiment was outlined as follows:

I wanted to test the effect that different types of music had on total sales at the school store. In an effort to try and eliminate as many confounding variables as possible I made sure to conduct my experiments for the same duration of time on 3 separate days (during tutorial) and made sure that each day there was a food truck set to come during lunch because, as I’ve seen, the store’s sales are greatly skewed on days without a food truck compared to those with a food truck. The first day, I set up a speaker in the store and played a Spotify playlist that was headlined as “studying music.” The songs had no words and were very relaxing. The second day, I played more upbeat, popular music from a Spotify playlist titled “most popular hits from the 2010’s,” and the final day was my control day where I played no music at all to see what my results looked like on a regular school day.

Here are my results:

1st day (relaxing music): $312 total sales

2nd day (upbeat/popular music): $275 total sales

3rd day (no music): $236 total sales

Analysis:

It is hard to take much away from this data considering that the study was only conducted once and over a short period of time. Nevertheless, it is apparent that music does have some sort of effect and it seems as though relaxing music has the greatest effect in increasing store sales whereas upbeat music decreases sales. To test this further I am going to be conducting a similar experiment over a longer period of time over the next two weeks. Next week I will be playing relaxing music in the store from Tuesday-Friday for the entirety of the day and seeing the results. The following week will be my control week where I just get the stores sales from a normal week with no music from Tuesday-Friday. It is important to note that both of these weeks have food trucks on all days. From my research, I have learned that behavioral economists do not need to see drastic changes in results for a study to be statistically significant. In fact, many of Richard Thaler’s studies only see an increase or decrease of about 5-10% in the desired outcome (sales, behavior, etc.). I hope to see some sort of change in sales, whether they are small or not, in the next few weeks. Finally, the most important part of any study is replication, so I am looking forward to seeing if my results remain the same across a longer duration of time.

Future studies

I also spent the last few weeks planning out future studies that I would like to conduct. I reached out to my internship advisor, Dr. Fitzsimons, to get his advice on some of my ideas. They are as follows:

• Spirited music and its effect on purchase habits: While my mom and I were at the University of Michigan every store that we walked into had Hail to the Victors playing in the background and this prompted me to feel spirited and in turn buy more of their merchandise. Thus, I want to test how spirit/passion, instigated by music, effect’s consumer habits. Unfortunately, our school does not have a fight song of any sort, so I want to switch my focus past schools and see if this phenomenon has the same effect on other domains such as in restaurants, clothing stores, etc. Would you have any ideas on how to do this?
  • For this idea Dr. Fitzsimons suggested that I looked into music that emphasizes competition. For instance, playing a song like We Are the Champions to see if getting people feeling competitive will encourage them to purchase more of a certain product.
• Music leading to perception of quality of good: I got this idea when my mom and I walked into our hotel in Ann Arbor, which was very similar to the Wa Duke. When I walked in I heard the piano being played in the background and I noticed that this type of music caused me to recognize that we were in a high end/wealthy location. In contrast, when I walked into a gas station last week, I noticed that the music coming from inside gave me the feeling that I was not in as nice of a location. Anyway, this got me thinking about how sales would be affected if I could switch the music in a high end store to “gas station music” and vice versa. Would gas stations make more money? Would the Wa Duke make less money? Also, I wonder if stores could charge more money for the same good if there is “fancy” music being played as people will subconsciously think they are in a luxurious, high quality store so they will be willing to pay more. I know that this study is a bit of a stretch in terms of logistics but was wondering if you had any thoughts?
  • Dr. Fitzsimons suggested that it is likely that “there is some kind of matching going on.” He went on to explain, “Fancy music in a gas station won’t ‘fit’ where it does in the fancy hotel. So you could explore the ‘fit’ so to speak – high fits lead to higher sales, and low fits reduce them.“
• Focus/productivity: My last study that I am thinking about conducting is music’s effect on productivity and, if my results match my hypothesis, writing a proposal to my school to allow certain music in testing environments. I know for me, as someone who has struggled with anxiety, music is a very powerful method of calming me down and prompting me to focus. I also know that when I turn on my specific playlist I recognize that it is time to do work and am wondering if my feelings towards music and productivity are shared with my peers. Of course, it is every school’s goal to maximize a student’s potential and for those who have accommodations, I am thinking that many students may benefit from having quiet music in the background while taking a test. I feel fairly confident in the studies I plan on running here but thought that I would share them with you anyway. The first study looks at student’s desire to do work under such conditions. I plan on playing soft music in different study halls and seeing what percentage of students do something productive and what percent do not. My second study will be about productivity, and will be testing how much work different student’s gets done in a music environment versus a non-music environment. Finally, and most importantly, I want to test if students perform better in testing environments if there is relaxing music in the background. I recognize that conducting this experiment in a high stakes test is unethical, so I have spoken to my teachers about conducting my studies during practice and mock tests. I have plans for each of these studies and of course recognize that my findings will vary from person to person but feel if I get a strong enough response that I could submit a persuasive proposal.
  • To this Dr. Fitzsimons responded, “This is a very cool idea. I think that music must help some and perhaps hurt others. Some find music calming as it reduces anxiety while some find it distracts them. I know when I write I have to have only classical/non-lyrical music going as the lyrics distract from my writing. It’d be cool to see if people that deal with anxiety or ADHD benefited while those that don’t were harmed.“

I am going to present these ideas to Dr. Fitzsimons’ lab group of Ph.D. students this afternoon to get their input as well. I am looking forward to sharing the new ideas that come out of that meeting with you all later!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I look forward to sharing new information and plans I have as they come as well as the data I am going to be collecting over the next few weeks! The mid-term for this independent study project is coming up and with that I am going to be reflecting on how I think this whole process has gone. I am looking forward to sharing this all with you soon!