Abstract

Companies display the product information to the consumers in their online presences. As importance of online marketing activities are growing, most of the franchisers also uses the product images on their online sites to provide the vivid visual information of their merchandises. But the previous researches do not provide the rigorous understanding on the nature of how the consumers process the visual information. In this study, we explore the theoretical backgrounds of the visual information processing and set up the research proposition on the orders and directions of the online visitors' attentions. The visit data from experimental online shop for 81 days was analysed with repeated measure ANOVA. We found that the nature of visual information processing in the online environment is different from that of the ordinary text process. At the end of this study, implication and the limitations of the research were discussed.