Effective visual product presentation gives consumers a sense of appropriateness and supplementary perceptible experience to lessen the degree of apparent risk, compensate the absence of sensory attributes, and offer delightful online shopping experiences. The purchase of lifestyle products has become a matter of happiness to consumers that is convincingly regulated by the mood. Mood—a direct indicator of the subjective wellbeing—plays a prominent role in consumers' purchase behavior. This chapter attempts to examine the impact of product presentation on purchase intention of lifestyle products and moderating role of mood by obtaining data from 356 Indian online shoppers. Results revealed that mood moderates the impact of product presentation on purchase intention in online shopping context. The study recommends that marketers must offer pleasant and lively virtual product experiences for creating favorable shopping atmospherics and encouraging consumers' purchase intention.
TopIntroduction
Globalization, demanding customers, advances in information & communication technologies (ICT) and increased usage of internet have led to increased competition and brought significant promises to electronic commerce. In such dynamic business landscape, the most important asset that an organization possesses is its customers because the ultimate measure of its success in the market is determined by what the customers think about organization’s image and offerings. Therefore, every organization aims to create market offerings appropriate to fulfil the customer needs and expectations better than its competitors with an ultimate goal of creating an encouraging customer experience, delivering of services which create value for the customer, building customer loyalty and ultimately contributing to the long-term profitability of the organization. Using the extent of sensory interactions, direct and indirect experiences have been identified by researchers. In the context of product, experience of direct nature shows the intercede interaction of consumer with product, in which consumer applies all its individual sensory stimuli. The depiction of object in physically form in various media generates the form of indirect experience. ICT and internet-related technological advancements have shaped a different form of experiences. In this form of experience, usually termed as virtual experience, prospective buyers can examine a product visually with the advance facilities of object enlargement, zooming, or inspecting the product with various angles.
Product presentation is one of the important determinants of consumer buying behaviour in both online and offline format. Turley & Milliman (2000) advocated that elegantly presented product creates a favourable mood which further consequently directs to desired shopping outcome in the physical store environment. This product presentation is even more important in case of online platform. Besides attracting the customers, the well-presented product also assists consumer decision making in the lack of direct experiences with the product. Since consumers can’t physically inspect the product before purchase in online environment, well-presented product plays a decisive function in encouraging purchase stimulus, shopping experiences and desired outcomes. In the age of technological revolution, e-commerce companies have begun to provide the sensory experiences to satisfy shoppers’ needs by employing the technological advanced tools such as product enlargement, product rotation, three-dimensional presentation, controlled playback, functional video of the product. Use of such technology enhances understanding product features & functions, website performance and success of e-commerce organizations in this competitive marketplace.
Although the online product presentation has attracted the attention of several researchers and practitioners, it is evident the missing aesthetics product experience is still the most important hindrance in e-tailing environment (Internet Retailer, 2005). This present study also proposes that mood may be a significant attribute that facilitates sensory or aesthetics experience in product purchase. As stated by Gardner (1985), mood is a decisive and momentary construct of person's instinctively apparent emotional condition. Mood of a person can affect his behaviour with no interference with other cognitive courses of action (Clark & Isen, 1982). Addressing this concern, an attempt has been made to examine the impact of product presentation of e-commerce companies on shoppers’ purchase intention and moderating role of mood in this relationship in the context on lifestyle products in India.
A study of this nature is justifiable in Indian perspective as it is the second fastest growing economy in the world, after China. Together with a population of 1.32 billion people, India is designated as the second largest emerging consumer market in the world and rapid economic transformations have led to an increase in the consumption. It is expected that e-commerce revenue of India will increase from $26 billion to $103 billion by 2020. Although lower than China, Japan and others in terms of the base, Indian E-commerce annual growth rate is quite higher. India is growing in this front at the rate of 51% and other markets are also growing (China 18%, Japan 11% and South Korea 10%) but slowly (ASSOCHAM-Forrester, 2016). Moreover, this research is interesting to be done because India occupied the significant position in the usage of internet, social media and Smartphone. With more than 462 million users, India has become the second largest country by the number of internet users after China.