Research on the impact of online picture contents of agricultural products on consumers' willingness to click

PurposeThe paper aims to clarify the influence of different picture contents on consumer's willingness to click pictures when shopping for agricultural products online and examine the intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions of the impact.Design/methodology/approachThe paper opted for an empirical study based on the cue utilization theory and information processing theory, including 3 experiments to test the existence, intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions of the impact of online picture contents of agricultural products on consumers' clicking intention.FindingsThe paper provides empirical insights about the influence of picture contents on consumer's willingness to click when shopping for agricultural products online. The picture of product's production environment or grower on the search result page can effectively improve consumer's willingness to click the product under dual-systemic information processing modes. Compared with product pictures, pictures displaying products and production environment can stimulate more cognitive system processing, and pictures displaying products and its growers can stimulate more emotional system processing, both resulting in higher click intention. However, the above effects only exist in the context of non-branded agricultural products.Originality/valueThe research results can not only provide practical guidance for merchants, but also fill the gap in the research on the impact of picture contents on consumers in the field of agricultural products in online marketing.