How Sound Branding Influences Customer’s Perception – Case company: Blinkist, non-fiction book summary application

Consumers are being bombarded with information from a multitude of channels, from social media, internet, smartphone applications to offline stores. Needless to say, people are filtering information deemed to be unnecessary. Thus, there should be a communication tool that can penetrate the filters and reach the target consumers like no other – “Sound branding”. The purpose of this thesis is to identify the influence of sound branding on the perception of customers in Finland. By collecting opinions from consumers towards the advertisement of the case company – Blinkist, the author obtains useful insights into how consumers perceive brand music, along with the brand values expressed in a commercial context. The author conducts an empirical research in the form of a questionnaire to collect the data. The outcome points to the conclusion that sound branding positively influences the perception of consumers in Finland. The strategic and consistent use of adapted sound at the favored touchpoints, leads to a clear picture of brand attributes, improved impression, positive emotion steering and message interpretation. The frequent touchpoints, as rated by the target group, would be applications, digital advertisements, offline stores and TV commercials. Sound perception involves psychological and physiological processes, not to mention that there are consumers with hearing deficiency. For this reason, the research limits to a modest size sample. Further study expanding this topic is highly recommended to inspect a broad range of consumers’ behaviors under a sound-simulated environment