Abstract
Visual attention is an important condition for consumer decision-making. However, not much is known on individuals' determinants of this visual attention. Using eye tracking, this study investigated how psychological values (i.e., materialism) modulate visual attention to specific sources of information (i.e., product, brand and additional information) in the context of luxury consumption. Participants were asked to perform a forced-choice experiment, where products were randomly assigned with luxury and non-luxury brands (Experiment 1) and product information (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed that materialism was related to relatively higher attention to luxury as opposed to non-luxury and higher choice proportion of products displayed with a luxury brand. Experiment 2 showed that when providing additional product information (e.g., regarding the material) in addition to the brand, all participants chose luxury products more often. Interestingly, choices seemed to be driven by enhanced attention to brand for participants with high levels of materialism when choosing luxury products. In contrast, choices were driven by text for participants with low levels of materialism for non-luxury products. This suggests that individuals with high levels of materialism may prefer luxury products for different reasons than individuals with low levels of materialism: while the first focus on the symbolic dimension conveyed by the brand (Experiment 1), the latter pay attention to the actual product characteristics (Experiment 2). Taken together, our results suggest that materialism as a psychological value has an impact on visual attention and information selection during decision-making in the context of luxury consumption.
Highlights
When you scroll down on your computer on a retailer website, what information do you attend to when trying to make your decision? Visual attention is defined as the degree to which people visually focus on a stimulus within their range of exposure (Solomon et al, 2010), and is an important precondition for product choice
The Condition × Materialism interaction effect was significant [b = −0.013, IC95% = [−0.026; −0.001]; t(8,089) = −2.047, p =0.041], supporting our hypothesis that materialism had an impact on the time spent on luxury vs. non-luxurious condition
Our hypothesis was that when provided with supplementary intrinsic information, both participants with high and low materialism will prefer luxury. We suggest that this may be driven by different reasons: materialistic participants can be expected to predominantly consider the symbolic aspect embedded in luxury, as previous research has shown that people high in materialism focused on the brand in the context of luxury consumption (Gil et al, 2012; Audrin et al, 2017a)
Summary
When you scroll down on your computer on a retailer website, what information do you attend to when trying to make your decision? Visual attention is defined as the degree to which people visually focus on a stimulus within their range of exposure (Solomon et al, 2010), and is an important precondition for product choice. Studies using eye-tracking measures have pointed out that during choice, a pre-decisional gaze bias occurs toward the preferred option (Chae and Lee, 2013). The attentional DiffusionDrift Model (aDDM, Krajbich and Rangel, 2011) suggests that gaze fixation is the mechanisms by which decision makers retrieve information about each option. According to this model, spending time looking at an option means that we accumulate evidence in favor of the fixated alternative (Krajbich and Rangel, 2011)
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