How Do Consumers' Cognitive Styles Affect Their Visual Attention Patterns? - Emphasis on Field-Independent and Field-Dependent Styles

Abstract

It is widely known that consumers' cognitive styles lead to making online shopping behavior react quite differently to various types of information on the online shopping websites. However, empirical results proving such premise from the perspective of eye-tracking are rare in literature. In this sense, this paper deals with two types of consumers’ cognitive styles- field-dependent and field-independent. Field-dependent users tend to follow other people's opinion, while field-independent users show maverick style of making decisions, trying not to be influenced by others. To add rigor to our empirical results, we analyzed users' eye-movements in response to information on the online shopping websites. Empirical results obtained from eye-tracking analysis revealed very robust and promising results. For a utilitarian product like notebook computer, the field-independent users showed higher TFD (Total Fixation Duration) and FC (Fixation Count) to product description information and product image information than the field-dependent users. For a hedonic product like perfume, field-independent users showed higher TFD and FC to product description and product image information than field-dependent users. As expected, field-dependent users showed higher TFD and FC to consumer review information than field-independent users. In this way, it is quite clear that the physiological information obtained from analysis of the eye-tracking data reveals more reliable and unique description of possible influences that consumers' cognitive styles may have on their online shopping behavior.