The Impact Of Product Image On Consumer’s Purchasing Intentions

With the rapid development of the Internet and mobile networks, online shopping has become more and more popular among the customers. Featured with the vivid image, picture has become an outstanding marketing tool in the network marketing scenario and which has been employed by various online shops with the purpose of attracting more customers and increasing sales. However, the academic research focused on the network picture is scarce and still the existing research has little practical significance. Therefore, based on ELM model, this research uses empirical research method to explore effect of the online shop’s pictures integrity and source have on purchase intention. At the same time, this research investigated moderating effect of product types. The results provide guidance to online shops on how to use pictures wisely, also has reference value for future studies.Referring to the existing literature and research method about online consumer behavior and online shop’s pictures, this research has conducted2experiments in the lab which contains10experimental sites with real shopping websites elements. One is testing the integrity of picture and the other is source of pictures. The data collected in the experiment testifies the effects of the integrity of pictures and source of picture have on purchase intentions, also examines the moderating effects of product type.The results indicate that the incomplete of online shop’s images has a significant negative impact on consumer’s purchasing intentions, experience goods suffered greater effect than search goods. Using both "Enterprise Publishing Pictures" and "Users Sharing Pictures" will improve consumer’s purchasing intentions significantly. And it has greater impact on experience goods compared to search goods. The results also reveal that the images’impact on both kinds of goods’consumer’s purchasing intentions exhibits no significant difference if "Enterprise Publishing Pictures" and "Users Sharing Pictures" are used solely.The theoretical contributions of this research are as follows:firstly, focused on the online shop picture at the backdrop of new marketing communication trend, the research has pioneered a new direction in the field of online marketing communications. Secondly, grounded on the ELM model, the research discusses the processing and decision mechanism of customers. Thirdly, under the premise of product type’s moderating effects, the research explores online shop picture integrity and source. It specifies the image information impact on consumer behavior theories.