====== Relationship between background music in a restaurant and customer's perceptions of price of a dish ====== By [[yiler-huang| Yiler Huang]] ===== Introduction ===== Pasta is a kind of noodle that usually has a variety of sauces and flavors. It was first introduced to Italy in the 13th century (Share the Pasta, n.d.), and it became one of the most iconic dishes in Italy. During that period of time in history, the Renaissance also happened and it is still considered one of the peaks of humanity in terms of culture. Pasta was considered a popular food during the Renaissance. In other words, pasta is one of the most popular food during one of the peaks of culture (Croce, 1987). In modern society, pasta could be seen in different places like restaurants, super markets, convenience stores etc. all around the world. One example would be a pasta restaurant I go to often. It is a popular restaurant around the area that has many kinds of pasta provided. Every time I go to the restaurant, there is always pop or hip-hop music playing which I think is a bit off considering pasta is a great invention created during the Renaissance. It makes me feel like the owner of the restaurant doesn't know pasta much, and caused me to think that their pastas are not very good. Therefore, I designed an experiment to test if the music playing in the restaurants really affects how people perceive the price of the food. The reason why the price is chosen as the variable is because price is most of the time, or sometimes, a quite accurate measure for people's perception of the quality of food. ===== Method ===== In the experiment, data were collected through face-to-face surveys. The researcher used a clip of a dish of pasta on a stock image website (Mixkit, n.d.). Two videos that have different background music (jazz and trap hip-hop, jazz will be called music 1 in this research and trap hip-hop will be called music 2) were edited and shown to the subjects. The researcher would ask them to guess the price of the dish in the video. These two types of music are chosen because music 1 is often tied to highly-educated people and luxuries; and music 2 is often related to urban cultures (Boyle, 2019). Approximately four sixth of the data were collected from people around Expo park in Yuanshan, and the rest were from people around MRT Xihu station. Most of them are workers or retired, and a small part of them are people under working age. The hypothesis is that the video with music 1 will have a higher assumption of price than the one with music 2. When people perceive a piece of information, the input will go through some steps so the person could understand the inputs. These steps include input, attention, organization, and interpretation. In short terms, input means the senses human brain receives from the world outside, attention is the process of deciding which inputs to focus on, organization is about putting the informations together, and interpretation is the process and understanding of the organized input based on factors such as past experiences, personality etc. The purpose of this experiment is to see if people's organization could be influenced if we give them different sensory iutputs. The music in the background might be organized with the image shown in subjects minds to form a perception of the quality of the pasta shown. For the hypothesis, it is reasonable to believe that people would think the pasta in video 1 was more expensive because jazz music give people a feeling of luxury. Video with music 1 (jazz), retrieved from insaneintherainmusic(2017, February 12)Nintendo Wii - Mii Channel Theme - Jazz Cover || insaneintherainmusic (feat. Gabe N. & Chris A.)[Video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT8ix3ZNlLM&t=253s&ab_channel=insaneintherainmusic Video with music 2 (trap hip-hop), retrieved from Trap Music Now(2017, November 11)NINTENDO Mii THEME (OFFICIAL TRAP REMIX) - VANDER[Video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKVcAeTxtE&t=32s&ab_channel=TrapMusicNow ===== Data ===== In total, 58 subjects were being interviewed. The video with music 1 was shown to 31 subjects (group 1), and the video with music 2 was shown to 27 subjects (group 2). They are divided into different groups depending on their gender and age (pre-working age, working age). Because the amount of subjects from different work ages was not equivalent, the age difference will not be discussed in this research. The average assumption of the price of the pasta in video 1 was 242 NT, and 213 NT for the video with music 2 (see graph 1). However, there was an outlier subject that had the assumption 1531 NT. If it is removed, the video with music 1 had the assumption price of 201 NT. Another interesting thing was that the average guesses of the price all male subjects gave was 27 NT less than the average guesses all female subjects gave for if the outlier is removed from the data (see graph 2). //graph 1// //graph 2// ===== Discussion ===== Because the outlier in the data for the video with music 1 is too extreme, the further discussion will use the data without the outlier. From the data we could see that the average assumption of the price of the pasta in video 1 is 12 NT less than the average assumption for the pasta in video 2. It is different from the hypothesis, but the difference is also not very significant. This could be caused by a few reasons such as: subjects didn't notice the music, the difference in the musics were not significant enough, jazz music doesn't give people a more luxury feeling etc. Another point is that we could see from both data that the average assumptions males gave is less than the ones females gave, it was unexpected and something worth discussing about. There could be many reason that caused their answers to be different, one possiblility is that maybe male and female have different habits in spending from the data. However, it is still hard to tell what made the difference, and it might be something that requires further researches. In the result, we can believe that playing trap hip-hop music might make people think the dish is slightly more expensive, which might be because many hip-hop artists are rich. This result could also be inaccurate due to the small quantity of sample size. ===== Conclusion ===== Overall, we could see that the background music in a restaurant might not affect most people’s perception of price much. In other words, it is not likely that human brains connect music with the price of a dish much in the organizing process of perception. However, there could still be exceptions like the outlying data in the responses given to video 1. It could also be because the quantity of data is not big enough that caused the result to be different from the reality. One thing we could also see is that male’s assumption of price is less than female’s assumption of price. Which could be because there is a difference between male and female’s spending habits. In summary, if you are running a pasta restaurant, the music you play might not matter people’s perception of value that much. However, you might want to pay attention to the advertising to male or female, because there is a difference between their perception of price. ==== Reference ==== Share The Pasta. (n.d.). //History of Pasta.// Share the Pasta. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://sharethepasta.org/pasta-101/pasta-iq/history-of-pasta/ Croce, J. D. (1987, September 13). Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-09-13-tm-7889-story.html Christmas-Rutledge, A. (n.d.). //How did Jazz become a ‘high’ art?// https://spea.sitehost.iu.edu/pubs/undergrad-honors/volumn-6/Christmas-Rutledge,%20Adrianna%20-%20How%20Did%20Jazz%20Become%20a%20High%20Art%20-Faculty%20Michael%20Rushton.pdf Shanti Boyle. (2019, June 21). The Art of Hip-Hop | Smithsonian American Art Museum. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://americanart.si.edu/blog/short-discussion-hip-hop-art-and-their-entanglement Mixkit. (n.d.). Spaghetti with cheese and black pepper—Free Stock Video. Retrieved March 20, 2023, from https://mixkit.co/free-stock-video/spaghetti-with-cheese-and-black-pepper-24463/ ===== Appendix =====