An Eye-tracking Investigation Of Consumer Online Assortment Information Processing

With the development of online retailing,the main research trend of assortment research transfer from traditional briack and mortar world to the digital world.Benefit from modern commodity specialization and and the online information explosion,the size of assortment grows dramatically and provide large variety for consumer,however it also make the assortment information more complex and burden consumers' information load.With the increasing efficiency of supplain chain and logistics system,onliner retailers could provide large amount of Skus for consumer under lower cost.This disstertation investigates the consumer assortment decision information process under dual-processing perspective in order to generate insight for marketer to optimize online assortment display and run marketing campaign.This disstertation reviewed the extant literature in the area of assortment research,impulse buying,visual marketing research applying eye-tracking technology and dual-processing theories.From current research focus and limitations,this disstertation focus to explore following main research questions:(1)how the variety affects consumer assortment decision process;(2)what is the distinctiveness of information processing between consumers with different impulse buying tendeny;(3)how consumer collaboratively process the image and text information from assortment depiction;(4)what is the underlying mechanism governing consumer assortment information acquisition and processing;(5)how consumer switch from herustic processing and systematic processing dynamically;(6)how the bottom-up and top-down factors control the attention deployment dynamically in assortment decision.With the help of eye-tracking technology to record consumer attention deployment process during assortment decision,this dissertation applies Bayesian analysis framework and Hidden Markov Model to analysis the eye-tracking path data.The main research work and results are summarized as below:In Chapter Three,this dissertation considers consumer's attention resourcese as cognitive effort,and investigates how variety affects information processing through tracking the attention deployment process.The research results demonstrate that:(1)the rise of assortment variety will burden consumer cognitive load and make consumer to devote more cognitive effort to finish decision;(2)with the increase of assortment variety,consumer will neglect more relevant information,devote lower effort to evaluate single option,and exhibt a low depth processing pattern;with the increase of assortment variety,consumer will shift to more image-focused processing,devoet proportion of effort to visual depiction,and search more image information.In Chapter Four,this disstertation focus on the information processing pattern of consumer with high impulse buying tendency,validate the effect of variety on information processing,and investigate the interaction effect of variety and impulse buying tendency.The research results shows that:(1)consumer with higher impulse buying tendency will devote less effort in information processing and have lower cognitive load;(2)consumer with higher impulse buying tendency will have lower depth in information processing,negelect more relevant information,and devote less effort to single option;(3)consumer with higher impulse buying tendency will have stronger visual processing focus,search more proportion of image than text,and devote more effort in image processing;(4)there is no significant interaction effect of variety and impulse buying tendency on assortment information processing;(5)effort-saving mechanism is the underlying process alter the collaborative processing between image and text.In Chapter Five,this dissertation buil a Hidden Markov Model under Bayersian Framework to explore the underlying mechanism of consumer dynamic information acuqitision and processing.The research results demonstrate that:(1)there are heuristic processing state and systematic processing state governing information processing simultaneously,under heuristic state consumer has stronger visual processing focus and tends to make long distance eye-movement,under systematic state consumer has stronger verbal processing focus and tend to make short distance eye-movement;(2)with the decision progress,the probablitity of applying heuristics processing change in a U shape curve while the probablitity of applying systematic processing change in a invert U shape curve;(3)the effect of bottom-up factors will decrease and the effect of to-down factors will increase as the inspection process;(4)Higher variety level leads to an increased likelihood of switching between these two latent processing states;(5)Higher variety level leads to increase the probability of applying herustic processing and reduce the probability of applying systematic processing;(6)Higher variety level leads to increase the effect of bottom-up factors and reduce the effect of top-down factors in attention deployment.Based on the findings of extant literature,this main innovations and contribution of this dissertation are summarized as below:This dissertation tries to apply eye-tracking technology to explore the consumer assortment decision process and apply Bayseian Framwork to analyze the eye-tracking patch data.This dissertation builds a non-homogenous hidden Markov Model to explore research question.This dissertation tries to apply advanced data acquisition method and analysis techniques in assortment research.Extant research only explored the condition that the assortment is depicted in image or text separately.This dissertation further explores in the circumstance that how consumer collaboratively conducts visual and verbal processing while the assortment is depicted in both image and text.Extant research about impulse buying focuses the emotion process during buying decision in the Brick and Mortor circumstance.This dissertation further explore impulse buyers' underlying information process on online environment by invertigating the features of attention deployment.This dissertation tries to explore assortment decision process under dynamic perspective and investigate how the switch between herustic and systematic processing and the effect of bottom-up and top-down factors change over time.Extant research investigates consumer process mainly through outcome-based method.This dissertation explores this process under dynamic perspective with the help of eye-tracking method and hidden Markov patch data analysis technique.