The brand website as a means of reviving memories and imaginary

Abstract

The paper explores mental imagery in the consumer online website navigation experience. We examine contributions of experienced mental images on the consumer’s post-visit in influencing e-satisfaction and attitude. Combining qualitative and quantitative attributes of mental imagery as influencers of consumers’ e-satisfaction and brand attitude we gauge the relative importance of these attributes and illustrate the role of website imageability and consumer familiarity with the brand in influencing consumer mental imagery. With limited prior research in the domain, we contribute to the literature particularly concerning the role played by qualitative aspects of mental imagery in the consumer online experience. Our conceptual model is validated with a quantitative survey methodology using confirmatory factor analysis. Results reveal the preeminent role of website imageability and consumer website familiarity in conditioning all quantitative attributes of mental imagery and selected qualitative attributes generated by the website-visit. Our discussion affords implications both for research and practice.