Effects of thumbnail sizes & shopping goals on online consumer behaviour.

Abstract

Thumbnails are miniature product images displayed on one page of a website and hyperlinked to other pages in the site [Lam et al, 2007]. Images are scaled down to thumbnails sizes so that more images can be fit and shown on a single page for convenience and easy browsing. They can often be clicked to reveal a larger image for website users. Thumbnails are commonly organized in rectangular arrays, but the size of thumbnails often varies across all different websites. Worthy to note, website users have different shopping goals. They can generally be categorized into either purchase-oriented shoppers or browsing users, with the former having a purchase intention and the latter without. Shoppers are expected to behave and perceive things differently under different goals and in different online environments. Indeed, our experimental and survey results showed that interaction effect exists between size of thumbnails and shopping goals. Moderate thumbnail sizes (sizes 2 or 3) are considered to be optimal for purchase-oriented shoppers while extreme thumbnail sizes (size 1 or 4) are considered optimal for browsing-oriented shoppers. The study concludes with a comprehensive discussion of managerial implications and the key issues learnt, as well as, suggestions for future research.