Research On The Effect Of Background Visual Complexity On Customers’ Purchase Intention In Live Streaming

In recent years,with the rapid development and improvement of financial payment technology of 5G communication technology in China,as well as the growth of the number of mobile devices and the popularity of social media,more and more consumers have chosen to shop online,and online e-commerce platforms have developed rapidly.Moreover,the epidemic changed consumers’ consumption patterns,and the circulation of commodities,technology,and the electricity industry rapid development,live stream also grew rapidly.With the rapid growth of e-commerce live streaming,more and more small businesses will establish their live streaming channels as the focus for businesses.It is key for retailers to attract more consumers and improve product sales.The existing literature on e-commerce live streaming mainly studies the personal characteristics of consumers,the characteristics of live broadcasters,and the characteristics of live streaming platforms.However,the impact of visual design in the live streaming room on consumers’ purchase intention is often overlooked.Currently,most of the research on visual stimulation is concentrated on the web page and advertising image design.Few studies have conducted in-depth research on the visual design factors of live streaming.Secondly,in the existing research on visual stimuli and user behavior response,the specific influence of visual complexity has been inconclusive.It is not clear whether the impact of visual complexity in live streaming is different from traditional shopping.Because of the above shortcomings,this study mainly focuses on two questions:(1)How does the background visual complexity of the live room affect the consumers’ emotions and thus affect their purchase intention? Is there a gender difference?(2)How does the background visual complexity of the live room affect the consumers’ cognition and thus affect their purchase intention? This study takes Taobao’s live as examples and studies the impact of the background visual complexity of the live room on consumers’ purchase intention from both emotional and cognitive aspects.To achieve the research goal,this study selects the background visual complexity of the live room as the external stimulus,assumes that different degrees of background visual complexity will affect the users’ emotion and cognition and then affects the users’ purchase intention.This paper conducted two experiments on visual stimulation in Taobao live.Firstly,we constructed a research model on background visual complexity,consumer emotion,and purchase intention in live streaming based on the stimulus-organism-response framework.A total of 432 valid questionnaire data were collected through online questionnaires.Hierarchical regression analysis was used to evaluate the proposed model.Secondly,based on cognitive load theory and stimulus-organism-response theory,a research model on background visual complexity,consumer cognitive load,and purchase intention was constructed by considering the influence of external and internal cognitive load on consumers’ purchase intention.An eye movement experiment was used to collect valid experimental data from 55 subjects.The proposed model was evaluated based on a generalized linear mixed model and repetitive measure analysis of variance.The findings of this paper are as follows: Firstly,the consumer’s pleasure and arouse play a mediate role between the background visual complexity and the purchase intention;Secondly,the background visual complexity and the consumer’s pleasure and arouse show an inverted U-shaped relationship,which is moderated by gender;Thirdly,the consumer’s cognitive load mediates the background visual complexity and purchase intention;Fourthly,the background visual complexity harms the consumer’s internal cognitive load and increases the external cognitive load.This paper’s innovation points are as follows.Firstly,the innovation of the research object.This study is the first to study the new impact of background visual complexity on consumer behavior in live streaming,providing effective suggestions for live interface design and enriching research in the field of visual complexity.Secondly,the innovation of research perspective.This study explores the impact of background visual complexity on consumer behavior from the perspectives of emotion and cognition.By combining the consumer self-perception data obtained from questionnaire survey and the physiological data captured by eye trackers,the study provides novel ideas for understanding the influence mechanism of visual stimuli on consumers’ purchase intention.