An Exploratory Eye-tracking Research on Sustainability-related Decision Making in an Online Environment

Abstract

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) market has been undergoing rapid changes related to sustainability and digital transformation in the past decade. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation moving many consumers into e-commerce. Due to the sensory limitations posed by online web shops, visual presentation has become more important than ever. Therefore, this project explored how online consumers attend and process product packaging with different sustainability cues and the impact of different cognitive goals on their viewing patterns through a combination of eye tracking method and self-report. The survey result suggests that both the sustainability labels and the packaging material have a significant impact on perceived sustainability and preference. Furthermore, the results indicate that there is a rapid drop-off of effect of increasing the number of sustainability labels on evaluated sustainability level and preference after the first or second sustainability label. The eye-tracking result suggests that different cognitive goals impact viewing patterns of the participants (i.e., the fixation duration was highly correlated with preference and the fixation count was highly correlated with non-preference-based task of evaluating product sustainability). In addition, the overall visual attention was positively correlated with the self-reported scoring of preferability and sustainability. These results indicate that consumers are affected by the sustainability cues presented on packaging in virtual settings. Also, this proves that the gaze reflects not only the decision-making process for preference choices but also for varying consumer choice processes such as sustainability evaluation.