Title: Use of graphic images and text characters in web banners

Authors: Eric K.W. Lau

Addresses: Faculty of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Abstract: Participants were presented with a list of web banners and asked to perform a series of matching tasks to test the effectiveness of graphic images, as compared with verbal characters, in website banners for e-marketing purposes. Participants studied ten different web pages. The web banners consisted of images or characters that had some degree of linkage to the corresponding web contents. Results show that: participants have a greater ability to match web contents if banners are relevant to the web page contents; contextual cues can be enriched by the context of the images used in the web banners; frequent web surfers are less likely to recall web banners than normal web users. These findings are discussed in the light of research on the effect of ||picture superiority|| and ||semantic coding|| on memory of pictures and words. Several significant interactions among those factors were also observed, and these extend earlier research in psychology and e-marketing. The implications of the results are discussed and future research directions are suggested.

Keywords: internet marketing; web banners; recall; picture superiority; e-marketing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2004.004020

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2004 Vol.1 No.2, pp.196 - 203

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article