1.0 INTRODUCTION
Willy Store is a retail company that offers a range of products to its online customers. The store offers cosmetics, electronic, and domestic products at a comparatively advantageous price. The company however struggles with delivery efficiency. This concern is not unique to Willy Store but is a general challenge for the local market that is plagued with diverse logistic issues with cultural and infrastructural undertone.
Willy Store is trying to develop a strategy to effectively manage the flood of complaints on the company’s helpline. A critical element of the strategy is the choice of music to occupy customers during wait time. The Customer Success Manger has a theory: people lose sense of time when occupied with enjoyable activities. The management team wants to test this theory and wishes to establish whether the findings of Kellaris and Kent (1992) can be replicated in their retail environment.
The customer success team wants to use the music modality — perceived to be the highest duration and judged to have the highest affective score. As a consultant, advise the management team of the company on the best choice of music to occupy customers during the wait time.
Critical Questions
This project aims to provide answers to the following questions:
- Do alterations to music modal property affect customers’ perception of time?
- Do consumers have a preferred music mode?
- What’s the best music tone to adopt for the customer wait time?
2.0 DATA DESCRIPTION
The customer success team performed an experiment to understand the predilection of its customers. The experiment has a sample size of 150 subjects. The mean age of the subjects is 22.4 years. The ratio of male to female customers is 32:19. The subjects have an average music training, although about 79.3% of the subjects declare their love for pop/Afrobeats music at the start of the experiment.
Under a controlled environment, each subject is exposed to the same song in three different tones (atonal, minor, and major). The duration of the song is 2.5 minutes (170 seconds). This implies that music modality is altered progressively from atonal to major key music for the three listening scenarios of each subject. Each subject completed a survey to record the perception of time and affective score of the music in each scenario.
3.0 DATA SCRAPPING
The data from the experiment is titled Customer_music_preference. The file is stored in a SAV format and made available by the company.
4.0 DATA PROCESSING
The data quality was checked for:
- Duplicates
- Null values
- Inconsistent formatting
- Outliers.
5.0 DATA ANALYSIS
IBM SPSS was adopted as the analysis tool.
The categorisation of the variables is as follows:
· Independent Variable I: musical modalities: atonal, minor, major
· Dependent Variable I: affective evaluation
· Dependent Variable II: perceived duration
5.1 Test for Degree of Influence on Dependent Variable I: Affective Evaluation
The Levene’s Test is not significant; variance quality can be assumed.
p = 0.643
The one-way ANOVA analysis reveals a significant influence of music modalities on affective evaluation.
F (2, 42) = 75.100, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.781
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed that there is no significant difference between affective evaluation of music with minor and major modalities.
p= 0.555
minor: M = 5.019, SD = 0.772
major: M = 5.368, SD = 0.670
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed that there is a significant difference between affective evaluation for music with atonal and minor modalities.
p < 0.001
atonal: M = 2.463, SD = 0.680
minor: M = 5.019, SD = 0.772
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed that there is a significant difference between affective evaluation for music with atonal and major modalities.
p < 0.001
atonal: M = 2.463, SD = 0.680
major: M = 5.368, SD = 0.670
Fig 1: Judgement of Affective Evaluation for Different Musical Modalities
5.2 Test for Degree of Influence on Dependent Variable II: Perceived Duration
The Levene’s Test is not significant; variance quality can therefore be assumed.
p = 0.796
The one-way ANOVA analysis reveals a significant influence of music modality on perceived duration.
F (2, 42) = 46.244, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.688
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed a significant difference between perceived duration of atonal and minor music modalities.
p < 0.001
atonal: M = 154.467, SD = 24.342
minor: M = 194.400, SD = 20.677
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed a significant difference between perceived duration of atonal and minor music modalities.
p < 0.001
minor: M = 194.400, SD = 20.677
major: M = 235. 2, SD = 23.782
The Post hoc test with Bonferroni corrections revealed a significant difference between perceived duration of atonal and minor music modalities.
p < 0.001
atonal: M = 154.467, SD = 24.342
major: M = 235. 200, SD = 23.782
Fig 2: Perceived Duration for Different Musical Modalities
5.3 Correlation between the Dependent Variables
The analysis reveals a moderate correlation between perceived duration (seconds) and affective evaluation.
r (N = 45) = 0.677, p < 0.001
Fig 3: Relationship between Perceived Duration and Affective Evaluation
6.0 SUMMARY
The analysis produced the following insights:
- The tone of music influences people’s perception of time and their sense of time is most accurate for atonal key music:
- Atonal: 2.95 minutes
- Minor: 3.12 minutes
- Major: 3.75 minutes
- Actual time: 2.5 minutes
2. People react better to alteration from atonal to minor key music. More so, the affection for minor and major key music is nearly equal.
- Atonal: M = 2.463
- Minor: M = 5.019
- Major: M = 5.368
3. Major key music offers the most enjoyable listening experience yet associated with the longest perception of time.
7.0 CONCLUSION
Time does not always fly while having fun. People may not necessarily lose sense of time while having the time of their lives.
8.0 RECOMMENDATIONS
The best choice of music to occupy customers during wait time is minor key music. Minor key music is preferred because the listening experience is nearly as positive as that of the best loved music modality and the associated perception of time is more favourable. This implies that customers are less likely to be dissatisfied due to elongated wait times and less likely to be bored out by an atonal music choice.