12.62 Restaurant ambiance and consumer behavior. There have been numerous studies investigating the effects of restaurant ambiance on consumer behavior. One study investigated the effects of musical genre on consumer spending.19 At a single high-end restaurant in England over a three-week period, there were a total of 141 participants; 49 of them were subjected to background pop music (for example, Britney Spears, Culture Club, and Ricky Martin) while dining, 44 to background classical music (for example, Vivaldi, Handel, and Strauss), and 48 to no background music. For each participant, the total food bill, adjusted for time spent dining, was recorded. The following table summarizes the means and standard deviations (in British pounds):

Background musicMean billns
Classical24.130442.243
Pop21.912492.627
None21.697483.332
Total22.5311412.969

  1. (a) Plot the means versus the type of background music. Does there appear to be a difference in spending?

  2. (b) Is it reasonable to assume that the variances are equal? Explain.

  3. (c) The F statistic is 10.62. Give the degrees of freedom and either an approximate (from a table) or an exact (from software) P-value. What do you conclude?

  4. (d) Refer back to part (a). Without doing any formal analysis, describe the pattern in the means that is likely responsible for your conclusion in part (c).

  5. (e) To what extent do you think the results of this study can be generalized to other settings? Give reasons for your answer.