Exploring human brands in online shopping: An eye-tracking approach

Abstract

Trust plays a critical role in facilitating transactions in the online shopping environment. Accordingly, various methods have been considered to enhance customer trust. Human branding has received increased attention and played a vital role in business in recent years because it has great impacts on our daily life and consumption. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of applying human brands in an online shopping environment with an emphasis on product type and human brand attachment. The study combines the eye-tracking technique with a self-reported questionnaire to gain a deeper understanding of the effect of human branding in the online shopping process. The results showed that both the product type and level of human brand attachment have significant influences on a customer's visual attention as well as perceived trust towards the product. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.