The impact of cover image authenticity and aesthetics on users’ product-knowing and content-reading willingness in social shopping community

Entitled cover images are used widely in social shopping communities to induce content reading, a prerequisite for product purchasing. However, it is still unclear which features of cover images affect users’ product-knowing willingness and content-reading willingness and how. To address this research gap, this paper draws upon the stimulus-organism-response framework and takes a mixed-method approach by conducting 1) a Delphi study to identify two image features (authenticity and aesthetics) as important triggers for content reading and 2) a scenario experiment to reveal the mechanisms through which image features impact users’ product-knowing willingness and content-reading willingness. The results confirm the positive effects of both image authenticity and image aesthetics on viewers’ beliefs toward the corresponding textual content (i.e., expected content credibility and usefulness) and product (i.e., perceived product attraction and expected product value). We also find negative interaction effects between these features on product-related beliefs. This paper has important implications for both research and practice.