Consumer visual attention and behaviour of online clothing

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study online clothing consumers' behaviour and their visual attention mechanism to provide objective and quantitative evidences for the display and sales of online clothing.

Design/methodology/approach

Firstly, this paper conducted a Focus Group Methodology and questionnaire survey to obtain concern factors of online clothing. Secondly, the online clothing's bottom-up visual stimulation and consumer's top-down expectations were analysed, and proposed the hypotheses about significant stimulus of clothing and consumer's emotional experience. Thirdly, the online clothing consumer's visual attention rules and related qualitative results were discussed, and proposed visual attention law for online clothing. Finally, took the company's 84th quarter clothing design practices as research projects, all the hypotheses were demonstrated through eye movement physiology experiments, online clothing trial release and node sales data.

Findings

Online clothing has unique visual display ways compared with other online products such as online advertising, brands and food packaging. Clothing patterns of unfamiliar (fresh) font shapes are more attractive than the patterns of familiar fonts. The cause of the bottom-up visual attention bias is the contrast between clothing features, not the absolute stimulus intensity of the features themselves. Clothing factors can change their emotional experience from no difference to significant difference under the influence of other clothing factors.

Originality/value

Put forward hypotheses of online clothing consumer behaviour and its visual attention mechanism, provided objective and quantitative evidences through eye tracker.

Citation

Mo, X., Sun, E. and Yang, X. (2021), "Consumer visual attention and behaviour of online clothing", International Journal of Clothing Science and Technology, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 305-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCST-02-2020-0029