Emotionalizing e-Commerce Pages: Empirical Evaluation of Design Strategies for Increasing the Affective Customer Response

The interdisciplinary research of neuromarketing shows that the conscious and rational consumer is only an illusion, whereas emotions have a significant influence on consumer behavior. Therefore, this study examines the effect of emotionalized e-com pages on visitors' emotions as well as on their behavioral intention in hedonic situations. Three landing pages are conceptualized using diverse techniques of emotional boosting along with different procedures of triggering distinct levels of neuronal activity. The impact of these landing pages is examined in an online survey, generating a sample of 391 participants. The resulting dataset is analyzed by using structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses. The results confirm that emotions can be triggered only by seeing a landing page of an e-com store and that these emotions influence the behavioral intentions. Additionally, the study shows a moderating effect of long-term involvement and mood and provides recommendations for appropriate and well-designed websites.