Effect of Background Music on Eating Speed of Consumers

The present study is inspired by a marketing technique used by fast food restaurants. Usually in fast food restaurants, pop music is run by the marketers in order to increase the eating speed and food quantity intake of the consumers because the resultant owners want their consumers to eat fast in order to get space for new customers and eat more in order to increase profitability. In order to energize and arouse the hunger of the consumers, fast food marketers run pop music instead of classical music or no music at all. Keeping in view this marketing strategy, the present study intended to examine the effect of background music on eating speed. A self-made test was administered to 60 male and female students by using a simple random sampling technique. Certain hypotheses were developed for this experiment. Main findings of the present study revealed that pop music increases eating speed, whereas classical music reduces eating speed, as compared to no music. Findings also indicated that during pop music, people ate more food in a given period of time as compared to classical music and without music.