Online advertising can help consumers to implement their purchase intentions on shopping websites. This research tests the hypothesis that online advertising can speed-up product search by visually suppressing competing products rather than by enhancing the target product on websites that lack a systematic visual organization. First, a survey shows that searching for products on a shopping website after having clicked on an online ad is a common experience. Second, a lay-theory experiment shows that the majority of participants incorrectly predict that online ads do not affect product search, but if these ads do, product search would be independent of shopping website design. Third, three eye-tracking and two search-time experiments reveal that online ads with an image of the target product improved search speed by about 25%, for websites without a systematic visual organization of products. Improved search speed was primarily due to faster rejection of competing products because the ads helped to perceptually suppress their color features. These results provide new insights into online advertising effects, the fundamental search processes through which these accrue, and how ads can support consumers in making their planned purchases.

中文翻译：

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在线广告抑制了计划购买期间的视觉竞争

在线广告可以帮助消费者在购物网站上实现其购买意图。这项研究检验了这样一个假设，即在线广告可以通过在视觉上抑制竞争产品而不是通过在缺乏系统视觉组织的网站上增强目标产品来加速产品搜索。首先，一项调查显示，点击在线广告后在购物网站上搜索产品是一种常见体验。其次，外行理论实验表明，大多数参与者错误地预测在线广告不会影响产品搜索，但如果这些广告影响产品搜索，那么产品搜索将独立于购物网站设计。第三，三个眼动追踪和两个搜索时间实验表明，带有目标产品图像的在线广告将搜索速度提高了约 25%，对于没有系统的产品视觉组织的网站。搜索速度的提高主要是由于更快地拒绝竞争产品，因为广告有助于在感知上抑制其颜色特征。这些结果为在线广告效果、产生这些效果的基本搜索过程以及广告如何支持消费者进行计划购买提供了新的见解。