2 page lit review

What is music? Music is defined as vocal or instrumental sounds combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. An important factor of music are the instruments. Instruments that are over 35,000 years ago have been discovered, which suggests that music has practical importance for survival and is essential in life (Conard, Malina, & Munzel, 2009, Yehuda, 2011). Music has played an important role in life. Music has been known to reduce stress, provides comfort, improve cognition, and effect the attitudes of consumers when making purchases. Referring back to the definition of music, it describes music as an expression of emotion. Using this definition, a mother humming to calm her cranky baby could be defined as music. This is also an example that proves there is a relationship between music and mood. As stated before, music improves cognition. It has been reported that music listening activates areas of the brain that are involved in attention, semantic processing, and various states of emotion, such as amygdala and hippocampus (Koelsch, 2010; Sarkamo et al., 2008).

Music is so vital to emotions and mood that it can be used in advertising. Advertisements often rely on music and entertaining elements without providing much information about the product. That type of advertising is primarily designed to trigger an emotional reaction and/or appeal to hedonic needs (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). Based on this information, previous research and findings mood can be certainly influence by music and mood can influence what type of music one may decide to listen to.