Recently, sensory marketing is gaining attention as a novel way of connecting brands to customers (Gobe 2009, Peck and Childers 2008). A paucity of studies in this area focuses on investigating the interplays between senses (Hoegg and Alba 2007, Krishna, Elder, and Caldara 2010) rather than examining the effect of a single sense in isolation (Krishna, Lwin,and Morrin 2010, Peck and Shu 2009, Meyers-Levy and Zhu 2010). Consumers naturally process information utilizing all the senses in unison (Krishna 2010, Elder and Krishna 2010). This multi-sensory nature of perception leads to an important research agenda of investigating the impacts of synergies and interferences between the senses on brand evaluations and preferences (Hoegg and Alba 2007). For example, when visual and auditory stimuli compete for attention, consumers’ attention could be divided in between so the senses function as interference to each other (Bonnel and Hafter 1998). In contrast, semantic congruence between smell and touch could create synergy and lead to more positive evaluation of products (Krishna, Elder,and Caldara 2010). The sensory research that examined each sense in isolation has shown that color affects product evaluations (Deng, Hui, and Hutchinson 2010, Gorn et al. 2004) so does music (Zhu and Meyers-Levy 2005, Meyers-Levy and Zhu 2010). In this study, we document the synergistic effect of multisensory semantic congruence between color and music. We manipulate hue dimension of color and tempo of music to activate a specific semantic meaning and show that when the two senses align on the dimension of the particular semantic meaning they enhance product evaluations. In the context of e-book site evaluation, the semantic association between color and music led to more favorable perceived download speed, web attitude and intended web recommendation. Processing fluency mediated the effect of semantic congruence between color and music. 250 undergraduates were asked to review an e-book site and provide their opinion on it. We manipulated tempo of music and hue of color to induce feeling of relaxation. Adapted from Gorn et al. (2004), the participants were introduced to a front page of an e-book site and asked to click a featured e-book, followed by a full screen of the downloading screen with assigned color and music. The downloading screen was remained on for a while(17.5 seconds)before the book information popped up on the next page. Following the literature, we used blue 240 (vs. yellow 60) color with the same chroma and value levels of 100% extracted from the HSB color model. The background music featured Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring and played at a slow (vs. fast) tempo of 130% (vs. 70%) speed of original music to elicit more (vs. less) relaxed feelings (Gorn et al. 2004, Mehta and Zhu 2009, Pham et al. 2011). At last,participants responded to the dependent measures of feelings of relaxation, perceived download speed, and attitudes and recommendation intention toward the website. A 2 (color: blue vs. yellow) × 2 (music: slow vs. fast) between-subjects ANOVA yielded a significant interaction effect of color and music on the perceived download speed F(1, 246)=18.841, p < .01, Mblue, slow=6.860, Mblue, fast=3.586, Myellow, slow=5.144, Myellow, fast=3.974),attitudes (F(1,246)=9.603, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 5.162, Mblue, fast= 3.960, Myellow, slow= 4.511,Myellow, fast= 4.012), and recommendation intention (F(1,246)=13.339, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 5.877,Mblue, fast= 3.597, Myellow, slow= 4.657, Myellow, fast= 3.828) toward the website. The main effects of color and music were also significant. Participants who were exposed to the blue background screen reported faster perceived download speed (F(1,246)=7.505, p < .01, Mblue = 5.223,Myellow = 4.559), better attitudes toward the website (F(1,246)=6.971, p < .01, Mblue = 4.561,Myellow= 4.261), and higher recommendation intention of the website (F(1,246)=6.191, p <.01, Mblue = 4.737, Myellow = 4.242) than those who viewed the yellow screen. Participants listened to the slow music showed higher means than those with fast music (for download speed F(1,246)=84.109, p < .01, Mslow = 6.002, Mfast = 3.780; for attitude F(1,246)=56.274,p < .01, Mslow = 4.837, Mfast= 3.986; for recommendation intention F(1,246)=61.170, p < .01,Mslow = 5.267, Mfast = 3.712). Planned contrasts revealed that when the participants listened to slow music, blue color results in quicker perceived download speed(F(1,122)=29.594, p <.01), more favorable web-attitude (F(1,122)=17.221, p < .01), and greater recommendation intention(F(1,122)=15.667, p < .01) than yellow. For both participants with the blue background and ones with the yellow background, slow music induced greater perceived quickness (for blue F(1,117)=104.284, p < .01; for yellow F(1,129)=10.664, p < .01), more favorable webattitude (for blue F(1,117)=49.346, p < .01, for yellow F(1,129)=11.047, p < .01), and greater recommendation intention (for blue F(1,117)=57.351, p < .01, for yellow F(1,129)=9.989, p < .01). Two way ANOVAs also yielded a significant color × music interaction effect on feelings of relaxation (F(1, 246)=9.860, p < .01, Mblue, slow= 7.015, Mblue, fast= 4.825, Myellow, slow= 6.000,Myellow, fast= 4.922) and processing fluency (F(1, 246)=6.787, p=.01, Mblue, slow= 5.158, Mblue, fast = 4.328, Myellow, slow= 4.547, Myellow, fast= 4.385). There were significant main effects of color and music. Participants in the blue color condition perceived the download as faster (F(1,246)=6.729, p =.01, Mblue = 5.920, Myellow = 5.461) and the website as more fluent (F(1,246)=4.653, p < .01, Mblue = 4.743, Myellow = 4.466) than did participants in the yellow color condition. Perceived quickness of the download (F(1,246)=85.250, p < .01, Mslow = 6.507,Mfast = 4.874) and fluency (F(1,246)=14.958, p < .01, Mslow = 4.853, Mfast = 4.359) were greater for participants with slow music than for those with fast music. Contrasts revealed that for people exposed to slow music, felt relaxation (F(1,122)=17.980, p < .01) and fluency (F(1,122)=14.302, p < .01) were greater with a blue screen than with a yellow screen. For both participants in blue and yellow condition, slow music induced more feelings of relaxation than fast music (F(1,129)=16.647, p < .05). When participants viewed blue screen, listening to slow music activated more fluency than listening to fast music (F(1,117)=19.959, p < .01)In order to test whether the semantic congruency from color and music in feelings of relaxation leading to perceptual fluency mediated the interaction effect of color and music on website evaluation, we followed the bootstrap procedure for indirect effects in multiple mediator models (Preacher and Hayes 2004, 2008). The analyses confirmed that the influence of color ×music interaction led to enhanced feelings of relaxation, and then to processing fluency, and,as a result, to less perceived download wait time (95% confidence interval of .0108 to .1991based on 5,000 bootstrap samples with bias corrected sample estimate), more positive attitudes(CI=.013 to .102), and more favorable recommendation intention (CI=.002 to .149). In this paper, we extended previous research on sensory perception which had typically focused on investigating the effects of sensory modalities singularly to multiple sensory research by examining the effect of cross-modal cues simultaneously, and suggested substantive application opportunities toward marketing of an website in which perceived quickness of download speed is an important feature to manage to enhance purchase intention. In addition,our results based on semantic association between color and music revealed the underlying psychological process of synergy created from the integration of sensory elements. The mediating role of fluency could be applied to future research investigating other multi-sensory crossmodal combinations.

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