Celebrity endorsement in tourism: Attention,emotional arousal and familiarity

Celebrity endorsement in tourism is utilised by global marketing practitioners to attract tourists to visit destinations. Despite this, studies are yet to assess the efficacy of two specific types of celebrity endorsement, a celebrity from the host country (host celebrity) vs. a celebrity from the country-of-origin (origin celebrity). Utilising the match-up hypothesis, this research applied a quasi-experimental design, consisting of a mixed method approach, which combined eye-tracking and self-report data. Convergent results across three studies demonstrate that an origin celebrity elicits a higher intention to visit, mediated by the emotional arousal evoked from the endorsement. Eye-tracking analysis demonstrated that an origin celebrity elicits a higher degree of visual attention and emotional arousal when the advertised scenery is familiar. However, this promotion effect disappears in unfamiliar scenery. This research contributes to an evolving debate on celebrity endorsement in tourism, revealing the psychological and physiological mechanisms underpinning the effectiveness of destination marketing campaigns.     

Video mining: Measuring visual information using automatic methods

Marketers are becoming increasingly reliant on videos to market their products and services. However, there is no standard set of measures of visual information that can be applied to large datasets. This paper proposes two standard measures that can be automatically obtained from videos: visual variation and video content. The paper tests the measures on crowdfunding videos from a leading online crowdfunding website, and shows that the proposed measures have explanatory power on the funding outcomes of the projects. These measures can be effectively implemented and used for large datasets. Further, researchers can apply these measures to other sets of visual information, and marketers could use the research to guide their video design and improve their video marketing effectiveness.     

Ketchup with your fries? Utilizing complementary product displays to transfer attention to a focal product

Does placing a display of complementary condiments (e.g., ketchup, mustard, buns,etc.) next to a display of hamburgers make shoppers more likely to attend to the hamburgers? Prior work has established that in-store marketing strategies play an important role in drawing attention to products in a retail setting. Building on this research, the present study develops a framework to better understand how shoppers in a natural retail environment attend to displays of complementary products, and how this attention transfers to a focal product. The results suggest that assortment complexity of a display positively affects initial attention capture.. Further, initial attention capture leads shoppers to spend longer evaluating the complementary products in the display, which, in turn, increases evaluation and choice of the focal product. As such, our framework indicates that complementary product displays can be effective at increasing attention to and choice of an associated focal product.     

Women “in motion”: the kinaesthetic viewing experience in Chinese viral advertising films

ABSTRACT

Visual imagery provides aesthetic experiences for viewers, and viral advertising films address viewers’ experience of movement which has not been analysed. Developing visual analyses, this study uses phenomenological approaches and the concept of kinaesthetic empathy, defined as the ability of viewers to react to movements, also in film. It considers Chinese Wei movies (“microfilms” or viral advertising films) with reference to examples by Audi and Swarovski as representatives of China's post-socialist marketing culture. Women in these films are presented as “in motion,” yet still are often delimited by traditional gender stereotypes. These films are potentially ambivalent ideological carriers that encourage women to reinvent themselves through consumption within traditional gender roles but may also suggest the pursuit of different experiences as movement is abstract, transitory and cannot be commodified.     

Visual merchandising of pastries in foodscapes: The influence of plate colours on consumers’ flavour expectations and perceptions

The aim of our research is to find out how pastries should be visually merchandised in retail environments most effectively. In particular, we want to answer the question whether the colour of the surface (black vs. white) against which pastries are presented influences consumers’ expectations (sensory and hedonic), i.e., before tasting (stage 1) and perceptions (sensory and hedonic), i.e., after tasting (stage 2). In addition, we seek to detect any differences in sensory and hedonic evaluations as well as purchase intentions between stage 1 and stage 2.For this purpose, we conducted two studies on a special type of pastries, i.e., macarons: first, based on our observational research, we selected the most popular macaron flavours (colours): pistachio (green), raspberry (pink), coffee (light brown), chocolate (dark brown), lemon (yellow), and vanilla (off-white); second, we carried out a between-participants experiment among 432 participants.Our results reveal that customers seem to show a high degree of identification of the actual flavour in stage 1, with some doubts related to the colours light brown, yellow, and dark brown. Moreover, the assessment of the sensory attributes of crunchiness, creaminess, and sweetness, as well as the hedonic value and purchase intent appear to be higher in stage 2 than in stage 1. Furthermore, no main effects of the plate colour on the evaluations of greasiness, crunchiness, creaminess, and sweetness, as well as the hedonic value and purchase intent in stage 1 and stage 2 could be found. However, while the expectation of greasiness for the macaron colours green, pink, light brown, lemon, and off-white is higher when served on a black plate, for the colour dark brown, the expectation of greasiness is higher when served on a white plate. Finally, managerial implications for retailers, like, bakeries, pastry shops, restaurants, or caterers, are provided, the limitations of our research are mentioned, and avenues for further research are given.     

Object detection based on visual memory: a feature learning and feature imagination process

ABSTRACT

Visual memory plays an important role for the human’s visual system to detect objects. The features of an object stored in the visual memory have much lower dimensions than the features contained within an image. We simulate the visual memory as a feature learning and feature imagination (FLFI) process to build an object detection algorithm. The method is constructed by a bottom-up feature learning and a top-down feature imagination. The proposed object detection method is tested using publicly available benchmark data sets, and the result indicates that it is fast and more robust.     

Seeing history: a visual assessment of the historic-grounding of Old Western tourist towns

Despite the significant role that the visual plays in the experience of tourism, few studies have specifically examined the visual appearances of heritage tourist destinations. This study sought to analyze how historically grounded the visual appearances were of two heritage tourist towns in the state of Arizona: Tombstone and Jerome. These towns were both mining towns that experienced historic booms during the days of the American Old West and survive today as tourist destinations. This study utilized a detailed visual comparison of historic and contemporary town photographs in order to assess the relative historic-grounding of building exteriors and streets. It also incorporated the findings of interviews with tourists and town residents regarding their perceptions of visual historic-grounding. Study findings offered a means to assess and compare visual historic-grounding. Additionally, they suggested that while visual historic-grounding was important to visitors, it was one of several factors influencing their perceptions of the town's historic appearance: visual appeal, personal reflections, engaging activities, and previous visitor expectations of the American Old West (often grounded in filmic-representations) worked together to visually communicate a general impression of history within each town.     

Using deep learning and visual analytics to explore hotel reviews and responses

This study aims to use computational linguistics, visual analytics, and deep learning techniques to analyze hotel reviews and responses collected on TripAdvisor and to identify response strategies. To this end, we collected and analyzed 113,685 hotel reviews and responses and their semantic and syntactic relations. We are among the first to use visual analytics and deep learning-based natural language processing to empirically identify managerial responses. The empirical results indicate that our proposed multi-feature fusion, convolutional neural network model can make different types of data complement each other, thereby outperforming the comparisons. The visualization results can also be used to improve the performance of the proposed model and provide insights into response strategies, which further shows the theoretical and technical contributions of this study.     

Exploring the impact of the physical conditions of mannequin displays on mental simulation: An embodied cognition theory perspective

This study examines how mannequins' physical conditions of display height and distance are related to consumers’ shopping motivations in generating mental simulation resulting in purchase intention. A 2 × 2 x 2 between-subjects lab experiment (n = 249) was conducted to address this question. The results reveal a significant three-way interaction effect of display height, distance, and shopping motivation. Specifically, it is found that for those with a dominant hedonic shopping motivation, a mannequin displayed up high generates greater mental simulation than one displayed down low, but for those with a dominant utilitarian shopping motivation, a mannequin displayed high and close to consumers generates greater mental simulation than one displayed low and close to them. This study also reveals that mental simulation mediates the influence of the interaction effect of “display height x distance,” moderated by shopping motivation, on purchase intention. Important theoretical and practical implications for retail managers are discussed.     

Enhancing the customer experience with virtual and augmented reality: The impact of content and device type

Virtual and augmented reality are changing how companies interact with customers. However, previous research has paid little attention to compare their effectiveness. This study focuses on the perceptions of presence elicited by different types of contents (real or digital) and embodied devices (head-mounted display or smartphone), and their impact on user’s pre-experiences with hotels. Results from a lab experiment show that contents with high levels of factual realism (360-degree videos) have a positive influence on perceptions of presence, ease of imagination, and visual appeal, and on booking intentions. These effects are stronger when high embodied devices (head-mounted displays) are applied. Additionally, presence positively influences ease of imagination and visual appeal, which mediate the impact of content on booking intentions. These findings stress the importance of inducing presence as a key driver for behavioral intentions in hospitality. The comparative influence of conventional VR and AR experiences is also discussed.