Enjoy to read and enjoy to shop: An investigation on the impact of product information presentation on purchase intention in digital content marketing

Abstract

Our study examines the impact of product information presentation on consumers’ purchase intention through information processing (i.e., utilitarian and hedonic browsing) in the context of digital content marketing. This study initially confirms that the combination of social-oriented text with concrete images as well as task-oriented text with abstract images yield higher congruence since verbal and visual product information presentation are under the same construable level. Given this, we have conducted an experiment with a 2 (product information presentation: social-oriented text with concrete image vs. task-oriented text with abstract image) × 2 (product type: search product vs. experience product) × 2 (gender: females vs. males) (N = 202) between-subjects design. The results reveal that social-oriented text with concrete images encourages consumers to generate more hedonic browsing, thereby, higher purchase intention. These effects are contingent on the product type and gender, where females exhibit a greater intention to buy experience products when product information is presented in social-oriented text with concrete imagery compared to task-oriented text with abstract images, which is mediated by hedonic browsing. Our findings offer insights to managers for optimizing product information presentation in the realm of digital content marketing.