Abstract:
According to previous research, colour and price do influence shopping behaviour. Previous studies found that fixation duration on price decreases as price increases (Menon et al., 2016), and participants' fixation duration reduced on websites predominantly dominated with background (Bellizzi & Hite, 1992). This study aimed at investigating the role of colour temperature and price as determinants of shopping behaviour on ecommerce websites, where red and blue represented the warm and cool temperature dimensions respectively. Also, we aimed at investigating the relationship between brand credibility and attention to privacy policy on the websites. Since not many studies have mimicked real shopping experience for product preference, we collected additional data by eye tracking the shopper’s interaction with brand credibility and privacy policy link on two ecommerce websites, each designed as red or blue. Hypothetically, cool colours should positively influence online shopping than warm colours, lower prices positively should influence online shopping than higher prices, and higher brand credibility should negatively correlate with attention for privacy policy links. Following the previous studies, we recruited 12 participants and experimentally conceptualized shopping behaviour as shopping attention to interpret eye gaze data. Considering three eye gaze metrics- total fixation duration, fixation count, and mouse click count, we confirmed that fixation count is a relevant measure of colour and price as determinants of shopping behaviour, with warm colour and higher prices being the key determinants. Brand credibility did not significantly relate with attention to privacy policy even when the 'learn out privacy policy here' link was placed at a very salient location that would have generated mouse clicks for utility navigation (Russel, 2005) of either website. However, total fixation duration and fixation counts were relevant to brand credibility. Specifically, the findings will help marketers align product presentation with customers preferences for colour and prices, with the optimization of user experience (UI) in mind.