Disentangling the Effectiveness of Advertisement Content: Evidence from Eye Tracker Data
Noreldzaihan Mohd Rais
Arshad Ayub Graduate Business School, Universiti Teknologi MARA
Rosidah Musa
Institute of Business Excellence, Universiti Teknologi MARA
Abstract
In this 21st century, the advertising industry is focusing more on the online environment, which could be found on websites and social media, rather than the offline environment. With the fast emergence of digital online presence worldwide, marketing managers must ensure that the design and content of their advertisement can attract customers’ attention. As attention is captured, these advertisements will be able to convert it into purchase consideration, subsequently leading to actual purchases. The first ten seconds is the most critical part of an advertisement to capture customers’ attention. However, it is a challenge to understand what customers are looking for in advertisements. Further, from which aspect do customers look into, that would have more influence towards purchase consideration? This study thus intends to explore what and where customers of different genders look for within the first ten seconds of an advertisement; and to unravel its influence towards customers’ purchase consideration. Car advertisements published on Facebook during April 2018 from four brands in Malaysia; which includes Perodua, Honda, Proton, and Nissan; were used as stimuli. Eye tracker device was used to conduct heat map analysis and fixation counts. The data collected was based on a total of thirty participants, fifteen male and /fifteen female participants, aged between 20 to 50 years old. The result was quite surprising; it appears that both male and female participants look at similar angles from Facebook advertisements. Also, it was found that the message conveyed in the promotional text becomes an overall focus for both male and female customers when they look at these advertisements. Thus, it implies that promotional text is more influential in determining purchase consideration.
Keywords: Decision making process, Advertisement, Eye tracking
