Interactivity and Animated-Character’s Role as Mediator of Consumers’ Attitude Formation and Processing on the Web

Abstract

This study explores the role of the interactivity creative platform and animated characters in consumer attitude formation and processing on the Web. For the research, We employed two experiments to investigate the influences of the interactivity creative platform on attitude formation. In the first experiment, we explored how the interactivity creative platform including elements such as sound, color, motion, and text mediates between click-through intention and attitude toward the target ads. We also examined how these elements play a role as causal factors for the consequence of attitude formation in a computer-mediated environment. For the second experiment, we explored how different animated characters can contribute to attitude formation, from click-through intention to attitude toward the animated ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention.This study employed two-step structural equation modeling. This paper tests a new attitude model showing the process of how consumer attitudes are affected when consumers are exposed to an animated ad on the Web. The findings suggest that the interactivity creative platform and the animated characters possibly plays, not only the role of mediator or leverage as causal effect consumers attitude formation, but also the association with click-through intention, attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and purchase intention.