Xrisopigi Vardikou

• Agisilaos Konidaris, Associate Professor,Department of Digital Media & Communication, Ionian University (Supervisor)
• Spyros Polykalas, Professor, Department of Digital Media & Communication, Ionian University
• Aggeliki Sgora, Assistant Professor, Department of Digital Media & Communication, Ionian University

Summary:

Attention is a limited resource, as proven by cognitive scientists and neuroscientists over the past decades. There is a number of research papers that examine the effect of advertising elements on users’ cognitive functions. One of them (Dahl et al, 2003) has shown that cognitive functions (attention included) participate more when they receive an unexpected input. The theory on which these papers are based is congruence theory.There are less data that connect the advertisement’s design to the purchase intent in an ecommerce store.

In this study, we will examine the elements of the advertisement’s design, the user’s attention and the user’s purchase intent. This is possibly the first study that will attempt to connect the dots between every step of the path, from advertising to purchase, with attention being the “stop station”.

Moreover, this study will shed light on some aspects of the two most prominent digital advertising tools, namely Facebook Ads and Google Ads, and will bring valuable results on which are the factors, in each channel, that draw attention. Last, but not least, it will go beyond the click on the ad, attempting to link the elements of the ad directly with the purchase intention in the Greek market.