Effects of Attribute Framing Varying with the Elaboration in Online Shopping: An Eye-Tracking Approach

This study uses eye tracking and the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to explore the framing effect moderated by elaborations, hence resulting in the observed eye movement and purchase intention in online shopping. The results show that high elaboration is more susceptible to the framing effect on purchase intention, while low elaboration is more susceptible to the framing effect on eye movement. Our study also discovers that eye movements are capable of predicting purchase intention when customers are under high elaboration and low elaboration. Furthermore, under high elaboration, eye movement induced by negative framing had higher predictive power, while under low elaboration, eye movement induced by positive framing showed higher predictive power. These findings have important practical implications for e-sellers to identify the characteristics of consumers´ elaboration using eye movements and to deliver different framing messages and product information corresponding to different elaboration levels.