PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study online clothing consumers' behaviour and their visual attention mechanism to provide objective and quantitative evidences for the display and sales of online clothing.Design/methodology/approachFirstly, this paper conducted a Focus Group Methodology and questionnaire survey to obtain concern factors of online clothing. Secondly, the online clothing's bottom-up visual stimulation and consumer's top-down expectations were analysed, and proposed the hypotheses about significant stimulus of clothing and consumer's emotional experience. Thirdly, the online clothing consumer's visual attention rules and related qualitative results were discussed, and proposed visual attention law for online clothing. Finally, took the company's 84th quarter clothing design practices as research projects, all the hypotheses were demonstrated through eye movement physiology experiments, online clothing trial release and node sales data.FindingsOnline clothing has unique visual display ways compared with other online products such as online advertising, brands and food packaging. Clothing patterns of unfamiliar (fresh) font shapes are more attractive than the patterns of familiar fonts. The cause of the bottom-up visual attention bias is the contrast between clothing features, not the absolute stimulus intensity of the features themselves. Clothing factors can change their emotional experience from no difference to significant difference under the influence of other clothing factors.Originality/valuePut forward hypotheses of online clothing consumer behaviour and its visual attention mechanism, provided objective and quantitative evidences through eye tracker.

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PurposeFor online experiential products, tactile attributes are important but hard-to-achieve features. This research aims to explore consumers' emotional experiences by incorporating tactile attributes into the online clothing shopping scenario.Design/methodology/approachThis paper presents two online shopping experiments by consumers who purchase online clothing: one experiment involves subjects browsing clothing products on a computer screen; the other one involves subjects touching the clothing fabric while browsing a corresponding product on a computer screen. Based on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) model, a physiological polygraph was used to record the emotional experience of subjects under the stimuli of “sight” and “sight + touch.”Findings(1) Subjects had a more positive emotional arousal under the stimuli of “sight + touch”; (2) the visual merchandising of clothing and expected touch task affect subjects' overall emotional experience with clothing, and with a good visual experience and expected tactile experience, the subjects showed a more positive emotional valence under the stimuli of “sight + touch”; (3) differing from previous research, this experimental data only supports the hypothesis that the skin conductance indicator is related to the level of emotional arousal, without supporting its correlation with emotional valence. However, the heart rate indicator is correlated with emotional valence but not with emotional arousal.Originality/valueThis work proposes a way to study the tactile attributes of online clothing and enriches the theoretical framework of polygraph and the S-O-R model for the research of online experiential products, and in terms of application, it sheds light on sales strategies of online experiential products for retailers and brand owners.

PurposeThis paper aims to study consumers’ visual attention and emotional experience with clothing design factors and their combinations from the perspective of cognition and emotion and propose an interaction phenomenon to evaluate the combined effect of clothing factors to better guide online clothing design and sales.Design/methodology/approachAn eye movement physiology experiment was conducted, 33 participants screened by questionnaires were invited for this experiment. Hypotheses of visual attention were verified by the FIRST_FIXATION_TIME indicator, DWELL_TIME indicator and FIXATION_COUNT indicator. Hypotheses of emotional experience were verified by the PUPIL_SIZE indicator.FindingsFirst, on the product list page, it is better to use only the three factors of clothing and a small number of stimulating factors. Second, when the stimulus is consistent with the cognitive task performed by the consumer, the efficiency of the task and the consumer's user experience will be improved. Third, the positive interaction phenomenon of clothing design factors and their combinations could significantly attract consumers' visual attention and improve their emotional experience.Research limitations/implicationsThis work argues consumer interest and emotional experience with online clothing can be expressed through eye movement physiological indicators, and the concept of interaction was proposed to evaluate the design and display of online clothing.Originality/valueThis paper conducted interaction research on online clothing design factors and their combinations from the perspective of cognition and emotion, which provided an objective quantitative method for online clothing designers and online clothing retailers.

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