Problematising pitch persuasion through the neural influence of tonal centres in advertising music

Music is used in 95% of all advertisements. However, advertising music is seldom plannedout within the initial phases of ad creation and is often an afterthought. One constantlyneglected variable of advertising music is its tonal centre (TC), which is the single point ofgravitation around which other notes orbit. Different TCs have historically been associatedwith distinctive characteristics due to the vast dissonances between their intervals that werecreated by expiring tuning systems. The modern tuning system in Western music theory, 12-Tone Equal Temperament (12-TET), equalised those dissonances between different TCs.As a result, an assumption of transpositional invariance prevailed, which led to treating allTCs as perceptually equal. This assumption is either accepted or not addressed by theliterature on advertising music. Thus, this research set out to challenge it by problematisingit. In addition to challenging this assumption, this research also extends its scope to examinethe implications for marketing strategies, as it draws upon the relevant literature in marketingand consumer behaviour to inform marketers of applicable actions to their advertising efforts.This empirical research adopts a quantitative positivist methodology with a hypotheticodeductiveapproach. To facilitate this choice, a theoretical framework was synthesised usingseveral theoretical models: problematisation, classical conditioning, elaboration likelihoodmodel (ELM), music congruence, attention economy, and the theory of planned behaviour.An electroencephalogram (EEG) was used to examine the influence of all major TCs and allminor TCs on consumers’ attentional response, brand information retention, and purchaseintention. The results revealed a spectrum of TCs that influence those variables differently,whereby the most used TCs with the least number of accidentals evoked the highestattentional response, brand information retention, and purchase intention.The originality and contribution of this research lie within the challenging of the prevailingassumption of transpositional invariance, revealing a newfound understanding of theinfluence of tonal centres on consumers’ cognitive and behavioural response to advertisingmusic, offering actionable practices for advertisers to optimise their campaigns, proposingfuture research in multiple disciplines, and validating the use of non-medical EEGs forresearch within the social sciences.The research limitations consisted of design limitations (i.e. small sample sizes, selfreportingon some variables, anticipatory biases, and cross-cultural variability), technicalstimuli limitations (i.e. the controlling of too many variables), and application limitations (i.e.technical and legal issues hindering transposing music to different TCs).