TY - JOUR
T1 - A sweet voice
T2 - The influence of cross-modal correspondences between taste and vocal pitch on advertising effectiveness
AU - Motoki, Kosuke
AU - Saito, Toshiki
AU - Nouchi, Rui
AU - Kawashima, Ryuta
AU - Sugiura, Motoaki
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 17J00389 (K.M.), KAKENHI Grant Number 16H01873 from MEXT (M.S.), and a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a Proposed Research Area: 17H06046) (R.N.). The authors would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which significantly improved the final version of the paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - We have seen a rapid growth of interest in cross-modal correspondences between sound and taste over recent years. People consistently associate higher-pitched sounds with sweet/sour foods, while lower-pitched sounds tend to be associated with bitter foods. The human voice is key in broadcast advertising, and the role of voice in communication generally is partly characterized by acoustic parameters of pitch. However, it remains unknown whether voice pitch and taste interactively influence consumer behavior. Since consumers prefer congruent sensory information, it is plausible that voice pitch and taste interactively influence consumers' responses to advertising stimuli. Based on the cross-modal correspondence phenomenon, this study aimed to elucidate the role played by voice pitch-taste correspondences in advertising effectiveness. Participants listened to voiceover advertisements (at a higher or lower pitch than the original narrator's voice) for three food products with distinct tastes (sweet, sour, and bitter) and rated their buying intention (an indicator of advertising effectiveness). The results show that the participants were likely to exhibit greater buying intention toward both sweet and sour food when they listened to higher-pitched (vs lower-pitched) voiceover advertisements. The influence of a higher pitch on sweet and sour food preferences was observed in only two of the three studies: studies 1 and 2 for sour food, and studies 2 and 3 for sweet food. These findings emphasize the role that voice pitch-taste correspondence plays in preference formation, and advance the applicability of cross-modal correspondences to business.
AB - We have seen a rapid growth of interest in cross-modal correspondences between sound and taste over recent years. People consistently associate higher-pitched sounds with sweet/sour foods, while lower-pitched sounds tend to be associated with bitter foods. The human voice is key in broadcast advertising, and the role of voice in communication generally is partly characterized by acoustic parameters of pitch. However, it remains unknown whether voice pitch and taste interactively influence consumer behavior. Since consumers prefer congruent sensory information, it is plausible that voice pitch and taste interactively influence consumers' responses to advertising stimuli. Based on the cross-modal correspondence phenomenon, this study aimed to elucidate the role played by voice pitch-taste correspondences in advertising effectiveness. Participants listened to voiceover advertisements (at a higher or lower pitch than the original narrator's voice) for three food products with distinct tastes (sweet, sour, and bitter) and rated their buying intention (an indicator of advertising effectiveness). The results show that the participants were likely to exhibit greater buying intention toward both sweet and sour food when they listened to higher-pitched (vs lower-pitched) voiceover advertisements. The influence of a higher pitch on sweet and sour food preferences was observed in only two of the three studies: studies 1 and 2 for sour food, and studies 2 and 3 for sweet food. These findings emphasize the role that voice pitch-taste correspondence plays in preference formation, and advance the applicability of cross-modal correspondences to business.
KW - Advertising
KW - Cross-modal correspondences
KW - High pitch
KW - Tastes
KW - Voice
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U2 - 10.1163/22134808-20191365
DO - 10.1163/22134808-20191365
M3 - Article
C2 - 31163401
AN - SCOPUS:85067957076
VL - 32
SP - 401
EP - 427
JO - Multisensory research
JF - Multisensory research
SN - 2213-4794
IS - 4-5
ER -