The Webmosphirics Effects on Shopping Behavior: The Influences of Web Page Color Displays on Online Impulse Purchasing Intention

Chih-Huang Lin¹, Ting-Yu Liu²  
(1. Department of Marketing, College of Business, Feng Chia University, Taiwan;
2. Department of Marketing, School of Management, University of Bath, UK)

Abstract: It is interesting to note that even though the studies of atmospheric effects in physical stores have been abundant, knowledge of ambient factor effects in the online retailing context has been limited. This study investigates the influence of webmospheric effect, web page color displays on respondents’ emotional reactions and subsequent online impulse buying intention. A Stimulus-Organism-Responses (S-O-R) model was used as the basic framework and a laboratory experiment was conducted to test the hypotheses in this study.

The results demonstrated that web page color displays had a significant effect on participants’ emotional response, eventually influencing their intention to purchase impulsively online. Specifically, respondents felt more aroused and experienced greater pleasure when they were exposed to chromatic web page displays than achromatic one. Additionally, both pleasure and arousal emotions played an intervening role between web page color displays and online impulse purchasing intention. Personality traits and product involvement were proved to moderate the relationship between atmospheric cues and impulse shopping intention. These findings suggest that the website design with effective web page color displays would create a desirable environment and thus prompt consumers to buy impulsively. Finally, research implications of the model and proposition are presented.

Key words: webmospheric effect; Stimulus-Organism-Responses model; web page display, product involvement, purchase intention

JEL codes: M3