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

Relevant abuse? Investigating the effects of an abusive subtitling procedure on the perception of TV anime using eye tracker and questionnaire

The storage capacity of DVD means multiple subtitle streams can be included on one disc. This has allowed some producers to include subtitle streams with experimental procedures that we will term as "abusive" subtitles (Nornes 1999). Abusive subtitles break subtitling norms in an attempt to be more faithful to the source text and increase the translator's visibility. This thesis focuses on one such abusive procedure, namely the pop-up gloss. It refers to pop-up notes that explain culturally marked items appearing in each of the semiotic channels. Already popular with amateur subtitlers of anime (Japanese animation), pop-up gloss has come to percolate into commercially released anime DVD. This thesis investigates the question as to what effect the use of pop-up gloss has on viewer perception of TV anime in terms of positive cognitive effects (PCEs) and processing effort. A second question seeks to ask the validity of pupillometric measurements for measuring the processing effort experienced while viewing subtitled AV content. A novel methodology is applied where PCEs are measured using traditional questionnaire data, while processing effort is measured using a combination of questionnaire-based data, and fixation-based and pupillometric data gathered with an eye tracker. A study with 20 subjects indicates that the use of pop-up gloss does increase the PCEs experienced by subjects regarding items the pop-up gloss describes, while more processing effort is required by viewers when pop-up gloss is used. The analysis of pupillometric data suggests that they are suitable for measuring processing effort during the viewing of subtitled AV content

Dynamic adaptation of streamed real-time E-learning videos over the internet

Even though the e-learning is becoming increasingly popular in the academic environment, the quality of synchronous e-learning video is still substandard and significant work needs to be done to improve it. The improvements have to be brought about taking into considerations both: the network requirements and the psycho- physical aspects of the human visual system. One of the problems of the synchronous e-learning video is that the head-and-shoulder video of the instructor is mostly transmitted. This video presentation can be made more interesting by transmitting shots from different angles and zooms. Unfortunately, the transmission of such multi-shot videos will increase packet delay, jitter and other artifacts caused by frequent changes of the scenes. To some extent these problems may be reduced by controlled reduction of the quality of video so as to minimise uncontrolled corruption of the stream. Hence, there is a need for controlled streaming of a multi-shot e-learning video in response to the changing availability of the bandwidth, while utilising the available bandwidth to the maximum. The quality of transmitted video can be improved by removing the redundant background data and utilising the available bandwidth for sending high-resolution foreground information. While a number of schemes exist to identify and remove the background from the foreground, very few studies exist on the identification and separation of the two based on the understanding of the human visual system. Research has been carried out to define foreground and background in the context of e-learning video on the basis of human psychology. The results have been utilised to propose methods for improving the transmission of e-learning videos. In order to transmit the video sequence efficiently this research proposes the use of Feed- Forward Controllers that dynamically characterise the ongoing scene and adjust the streaming of video based on the availability of the bandwidth. In order to satisfy a number of receivers connected by varied bandwidth links in a heterogeneous environment, the use of Multi-Layer Feed-Forward Controller has been researched. This controller dynamically characterises the complexity (number of Macroblocks per frame) of the ongoing video sequence and combines it with the knowledge of availability of the bandwidth to various receivers to divide the video sequence into layers in an optimal way before transmitting it into network. The Single-layer Feed-Forward Controller inputs the complexity (Spatial Information and Temporal Information) of the on-going video sequence along with the availability of bandwidth to a receiver and adjusts the resolution and frame rate of individual scenes to transmit the sequence optimised to give the most acceptable perceptual quality within the bandwidth constraints. The performance of the Feed-Forward Controllers have been evaluated under simulated conditions and have been found to effectively regulate the streaming of real-time e-learning videos in order to provide perceptually improved video quality within the constraints of the available bandwidth