A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Eye-Tracking Studies for Consumers’ Visual Attention in Online Shopping

Abstract

As the marketing landscape continues to evolve, consumer preference remains a key driver of corporate profitability. Extensive research has shown that visual attention is a critical factor in consumer decision-making. However, a comprehensive meta-analysis of online shopping visual presentation has yet to be conducted. This paper applies various eye-tracking dependent variables to investigate consumer visual attention in relation to four common interface design factors: brand, endorser, product, and text. Generally, from the research it shown that product and brand havd positive effect, while text might be negative. It is worthy mention that we identified the subgroup analysis involving total time of fixation (SMD=-0.020, 95%CI: [-0.079,0.039], p=0.507), fixation count (SMD=-0.032, 95%CI: [-0.109,0.045], p=0.421) and time to first fixation (SMD=0.464, 95%CI: [0.346,0.582], p=0.000). In this paper, exposure time obviously impacted FC (Q-value=11.637, p=0.003) and TTFF (Q-value=10.316, p=0.006) in the reanalysis studies. Meanwhile consumer preference highly related to FC (Q=10.953, p=0.001) and TTFF (Q=6.540, p=0.011) were under concern. Studies contained 17 papers with a total of 1071 participants. The publication bias was within the reasonable rang and the heterogeneity mainly resulted in subgroup and moderator differences. Our study on systematic review and meta-analysis show that, to appropriately control the consumer visual attention attributes could be a good solution for increasing consumer preference in online shopping interaction experience. Furthermore, more controllable design factor and moderators related to visual attention should be concerned for neuromarketing progress. In the future, other measurements such as ERPs, FMRI, fINRs could be explored for making better consumer sentiment experience.