Facilitating imaginations through online product presentation videos: effects on imagery fluency, product attitude and purchase intention

Abstract

The use of imagination is a dominant strategy for consumers to form evaluations in the e-commerce environments. Online Product Presentation Videos (OPPVs) are vivid information that can facilitate consumers this task. Following the imagery fluency approach, we analyze the impact of OPPVs on consumers’ quality of product-related thoughts, ease of imagining, and responses toward the product. A series of studies combining experimental- and survey-based procedures shows that the presence and type of OPPV improves consumers’ cognitive responses and facilitates imagination about the product, which becomes a strong determinant of attitude and purchase intention. We also control for the OPPV’s trustworthiness to isolate the effects of the content characteristics of video. Moreover, we consider the moderating role of the consumer’s motivation to process information. The results demonstrate that high and low motivated consumers use their imagination differently. In addition, when OPPVs are featured by the brand, ease of imagining does not relate to purchase intention.