Abstract: The purpose of this research is to provide a model of the interactive effect of various factors including thinking style (Rational-Intuitive) and advertisement message format (rational-emotional) on advertising appeal and purchase intention via visual attention.In this experimental research (laboratory type), 18 advertisement pictures, including rational and/or emotional messages were observed by 180 participants who subsequently answered questions pertaining to the participants' individual tendencies, and questionnaires regarding thinking style, advertisement recall and demographic information. The data of this experimental research were collected at business laboratory by means of eye tracker. The 5 indexes of visual attention showed that visit count, visit duration and fixation count were higher for those viewing the entire area of rational advertisements than the same value for the entire area of emotional advertisment and total fixation duration was longer for those viewing the entire area of emotional advertisement than the same value for the entire area of rational advertisment. The visual attention of those viewing rational ads was higher than those viewing emotional ads. In addition, the average time to first fixation was shorter in the entire area of rational advertisement for those viewing rational advertisement as compared to the entire area of emotional ads, meaning that visual attention of those looking at rational advertisements was drawn faster than those looking at emotional advertisements.The effect of the interactive relationship of rational thinking with the rational message and the role of five indexes of visual attention as a mediating variable in the interactive relationship of thinking style with advertisement message on advertisement attractiveness and purchase intention were significant. The interactive effect of rational thinking with emotional message plus advertisement attractiveness on purchase intention had the highest overall effect. Key Words: advertisement attractiveness, purchase intention, advertisement message, thinking style, visual attention 1.Introduction The question of why there is variation among consumers in terms of purchase behavior, reffers to their dual thinking process. There are differences in terms of product design (the second layer of a product), consumer's view towards advertisement, purchase behavior, consumer behavior, and eventually in terms of individuals’ life style. Consumers are influenced by emotions, thinking style, perception, attitude, personality, self-concept and motive as individual factors and, family, cultural differences, generation gap, advertisement, fashion, and life style (which varies as the time passes) as environmental factors. The significance of this research lies in examining symultaneously the interactive effects of individual and environmental factors on advertisement attractiveness and purchase intention. Some advertisement agancies believe that emotional appeals are stronger than rational ones in advertisements although some research show that reality is something between both appeals (Venkatraman et al, 1990). Owing to different personal and cognitive charactistics, people are classified differently in terms of learning methods (Garcia et al, 2007). It has been confirmed that people perceive and process information in different ways (Khenissi el al, 2016) or have different preferences or strengths (Felde & Suprlin, 2005). Geraf et al. (2009) suggest that when visual people are encountered with objects by means of picture or diagram, they remember them better while auditory people benefit from text display in remembering what they have seen. IPA[1] in England compared the profitability of campaigns that focused on emotional engagement with the campaigns that stressed on providing audiences with information by means of persuasion methods, which resulted in more profitability of the emotional based campaigns (31%) as compared to the rational based ones (16%). Those campaigns which considered combination of sensation and rationalism gained more profit (26%) than those which only considered persuasion methods (Dooley, 2012). Aadvertising has long been known as the process of informing consumers about charateristics of a given product or service (benefits, functioning, brand, price, uses, etc.), and persuading them to purchase the product or the service (Wang et al, 2009). Literature review The presence of packaged food lables which carry nutritional information and health claims strongly influences the attitude and purchase intentions. Consumers have a more favorable attitude toward products with detailed lable description and nutrition information (Kozup et al., 2003). Qin and Forysthe (2012) suggested that emotions are linked to central attitudes and play an important role in purchase intention formation. They also suggested that only by understanding the underlying purchase motivations among consumers in each market segment can marketers most effectively appeal to those motivations in their marketing campaigns. Given purchase intentions are correlated with but imperfect measures of consumers' subsequent purchase behavior, marketing managers need to know when best to rely on them and how best to use them (Morwitz, 2014). Purchase intention can be used to test the implementation of a new distribution channel to help managers determine whether the concept deserves further development and decide which geographic markets and consumer segments to target through a channel (Morwitz et al., 2017). Their importance lies in the fact that intentions are considered the key predictor of actual behavior (Montano & Casprzyk, 2015). Methodology New experimental psychology was suggested by Wilhelm Max Wundt, who defiend four basic differents between observational and experimental studies in 1911, including manipulation, arbitrariness, reproducibility and isolation of irrelevant factors. To assess the hypotheses outlined in in this research, we ended up hand picking 18 fast moving consumer goods as utilitarian products as well as garment, backpack and furniture out of 264 products in 6 categories of fresh foods, drinks, electric appliances, non-electric appliances, hygiene and cosmetics in 2021. We also embedded these singled out products in 18 frames with a green background to let the participants focus on the packaging of the products, brands, messages and the advertisements as a whole. To record visual attention of the participants, we needed to design unknown brands to avoid biasing. We also ended up designing two rational and emotional messages as for each product in order to divide the advertisemnets in two categories to be shown to three groups of partcipants (control, rationally manipulated and emotionally manipulalated groups). This experimental research is based on a multi-factorial 2X3 situations, in which 180 particiants randomly were assigned to a control group, a rationally manipulated group and an emotionally manipulated group. Result The results of measuring visual attention indicators showed that visit count, visit duration, and fixation count for the entire area of the rational advertisement were higher than the same value for the entire area of the emotional advertisement, and fixation duration for the entire area of the emotional advertisement was higher than the same value for the entire area of rational one. Also, the visual attention of the viewers of the rational advertisement was higher than that of the emotional advertisement. The average of the first time to the first fixation for the entire area of rational advertisements is shorter than the entire area of emotional advertisements, meaning that the visual attention of the participants in the experiment was attracted faster when faced up to the rational advertisements, that is, more visual attention occurred. The interactive effect of rational message and rational thinking, in addition to the interactive effect of emotional message and rational thinking on purchase intention and the role of visual attention as a mediating variable in the effect of the interactive relationship between thinking style and advertising message on advertisement attractiveness and purchase intention were significant. Also, it was found that 73% of the variences in purchase intention is determined by the attractiveness of the advertisement. According to the results of Hayes regression and the analysis of variance, the interactive effect of rational message and rational thinking on advertisement attractiveness and purchase intention and the role of visual attention in the interactive effect of thinking style and advertisement message on advertisement attractiveness and purchase intention are significant. This research presents three models including the positive effect of rational thinking and rational message, the positive effect of rational thinking and emotional message, and the positive effect of rational thinking and emotional message and advertisement attractiveness on purchase intention as the highest direct effect of predictor variables on outcome variables. Discussion This study contributes to the literature of the consumer behavior in retail industry. As shown in Digram 1, visit duration for those being rationally manipulated who observed rational advertisement are less than those being intuitively manipulated, meaning that visual attention to emotional messages took longer than rational ads. -0.5 & 0.5 are emotional and rational message format respectively. Diagram 2 shows that those who have been rationally manipulated, observing rational advertisement, had longer visual attention than those who have been intuitively manipulated. As shown in digram 2, visit duration for those being rationally manipulated who observed rational advertisement is significantly less than those being intuitively manipulated. This implies that visual attention to emotional messages took longer than that of rational ads. [1]. Institute of practitioners in advertising
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