The impact of online reviews on consumers' purchasing decisions : evidence from an eye-tracking study

This study investigated the impact of online product reviews on consumers purchasing decisions by using eye-tracking. The research methodology involved (i) development of a conceptual framework of online product review and purchasing intention through the moderation role of gender and visual attention in comments, and (ii) empirical investigation into the region of interest (ROI) analysis of consumers fixation during the purchase decision process and behavioral analysis. The results showed that consumers' attention to negative comments was significantly greater than that to positive comments, especially for female consumers. Furthermore, the study identified a significant correlation between the visual browsing behavior of consumers and their purchase intention. It also found that consumers were not able to identify false comments. The current study provides a deep understanding of the underlying mechanism of how online reviews influence shopping behavior, reveals the effect of gender on this effect for the first time and explains it from the perspective of attentional bias, which is essential for the theory of online consumer behavior. Specifically, the different effects of consumers' attention to negative comments seem to be moderated through gender with female consumers' attention to negative comments being significantly greater than to positive ones. These findings suggest that practitioners need to pay particular attention to negative comments and resolve them promptly through the customization of product/service information, taking into consideration consumer characteristics, including gender

Mobile Consumer Behavior in Fashion m-Retail: An Eye Tracking Study to Understand Gender Differences

© 2020 ACM. With exponential adoption of mobile devices, consumers increasingly use them for shopping. There is a need to understand the gender differences in mobile consumer behavior. This study used mobile eye tracking technology and mixed-method approach to analyze and compare how male and female mobile fashion consumers browse and shop on smartphones. Mobile eye tracking glasses recorded fashion consumers' shopping experiences using smartphones for browsing and shopping on the actual fashion retailer's website. 14 participants successfully completed this study, half of them were males and half females. Two different data analysis approaches were employed, namely a novel framework of the shopping journey, and semantic gaze mapping with 31 Areas of Interest (AOI) representing the elements of the shopping journey. The results showed that male and female users exhibited significantly different behavior patterns, which have implications for mobile website design and fashion m-retail. The shopping journey map framework proves useful for further application in market research

A Novel K-Means Clustered Support Vector Machine Technique for Prediction of Consumer Decision-Making Behaviour

A greater number of consumers are using social networks to express their feedback about the level of service provided by hotels. Online reviews from patrons can be used as a forum to enhance the level of service of hotels. Customer reviews are indeed a reliable and dependable source that aid diners in determining the quality of their cuisine. It is critical to develop techniques for evaluating client feedback on hotel services. In order to accurately anticipate the consumers' decision-making behaviors based on hotel internet evaluations, this study proposes a novel K-Means Clustered Support Vector Machine (KMC+SVM) technique. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed to determine the characteristics from the preprocessed data while the Min-Max normalization approach is used to standardize the raw data. The performance of the suggested technique is then evaluated and contrasted with a few other methods that are currently in use in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, RMSE, and MAE. The findings demonstrated that segmenting customers based on their online evaluations can accurately predict their choices and assist hotel management in establishing priorities for service quality enhancements

The effect of web advertising visual design on online purchase intention: An examination across gender

With web advertising growing to be a huge industry, it is important to understand the effectiveness of web advertisement. In this study we investigate the effects of web advertising visual design (WAVD) purchasing intention within the framework of an integrated model. Nine hypotheses were developed and tested on a dataset of 316 observations collected via a questionnaire survey. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that while web advertising visual cues influence consumers' purchasing intention through advertising attitudes and brand attitudes, they do not have direct effects on purchasing intention. Further results on the moderating role of gender suggest that web advertising visual cues have direct effect on consumers' purchasing intention for male groups but not for female groups. This study contributes to the understanding the role of visual dimensions in forming online purchase intentions

Exploratory shopping: attention affects in-store exploration and unplanned purchasing

A fundamental function of retailing is to bring products into the view of shoppers, because viewing products can activate forgotten or new needs. Retailers thus employ various strategies to entice shoppers to explore the product assortment and store environment, in the hopes of stimulating unplanned purchasing. Here we investigate consumers’ breadth of attention as a mechanism of such in-store exploration and hence of unplanned purchasing. Specifically, attentional breadth is the focus that is directed to a wider or more limited area in processing visual scenes. In a series of lab and field experiments we show that shoppers’ attentional breadth activates an exploratory mindset that stimulates visual and physical exploration of shopping environments, ultimately affecting their product choices and unplanned purchasing. We also show that more impulsive buyers are more susceptible to these effects. These results complement and constrain prior theorizing on mindset theory, attention, store exploration, and unplanned purchasing, all of which are of practical importance to both retailers and consumers

Use of a real-life practical context changes the relationship between implicit body representations and real body measurements

A mismatch exists between people’s mental representations of their own body and their real body measurements, which may impact general well-being and health. We investigated whether this mismatch is reduced when contextualizing body size estimation in a real-life scenario. Using a reverse correlation paradigm, we constructed unbiased, data-driven visual depictions of participants’ implicit body representations. Across three conditions—own abstract, ideal, and own concrete body— participants selected the body that looked most like their own, like the body they would like to have, or like the body they would use for online shopping. In the own concrete condition only, we found a significant correlation between perceived and real hip width, suggesting that the perceived/real body match only exists when body size estimation takes place in a practical context, although the negative correlation indicated inaccurate estimation. Further, participants who underestimated their body size or who had more negative attitudes towards their body weight showed a positive correlation between perceived and real body size in the own abstract condition. Finally, our results indicated that different body areas were implicated in the different conditions. These findings suggest that implicit body representations depend on situational and individual differences, which has clinical and practical implications.LDC was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación Grant IJC2018-038347-I and the CONEX-Plus programme funded by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 801538. ATJ was supported by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad of Spain Ramón y Cajal Grant RYC-2014-15421. This research was partly funded by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (PID2019-105579RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). The authors would like to thank Martin Mojica-Benavides for his help in preparing the psychometric curve analyses

A Review of Eye-Tracking and fMRI Measurements in the Context of Neuromarketing and Consumer Purchasing Decisions in E-Commerce

E-Commerce has experienced a staggering growth in recent years, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak from March 2020 onwards. While the supply and the demand for online products has increased at an exponential level, this turn of events has in turn made it more challenging than ever for retailers, online brands and aggregators to make their products stand out from the crowd. Thus, aside from conventional approaches to creating an engaging online shopping experience such as visual design, online reviews and newly burgeoning Augmented Reality technologies, companies have become interested in utilizing Neuromarketing research in their website and product design strategies. The field of Neuromarketing utilizes Neuroimaging techniques to perform neuroimaging studies for marketing purposes. This review observes and compares the existing literature on Neuromarketing and online consumer behavior, by taking a close look at two of the most utilized techniques in Neuroimaging: fMRI and Eye-Tracking. The thesis concludes with a critical analysis into both of the techniques and into the wider prospects of Neuromarketing as a field of Consumer Research.E-Commerce has experienced a staggering growth in recent years, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak from March 2020 onwards. While the supply and the demand for online products has increased at an exponential level, this turn of events has in turn made it more challenging than ever for retailers, online brands and aggregators to make their products stand out from the crowd. Thus, aside from conventional approaches to creating an engaging online shopping experience such as visual design, online reviews and newly burgeoning Augmented Reality technologies, companies have become interested in utilizing Neuromarketing research in their website and product design strategies. The field of Neuromarketing utilizes Neuroimaging techniques to perform neuroimaging studies for marketing purposes. This review observes and compares the existing literature on Neuromarketing and online consumer behavior, by taking a close look at two of the most utilized techniques in Neuroimaging: fMRI and Eye-Tracking. The thesis concludes with a critical analysis into both of the techniques and into the wider prospects of Neuromarketing as a field of Consumer Research