The influence of different virtual product experience types on advertising effect: Imagery instructions and imagery-processing model as moderators 不同虛擬產品經驗類型對廣告效果之影響—以想像指示 與心像處理模式為干擾變數

With the proliferation of virtual product experience (VPE) applications on social network sites, investigations into the effects of VPE on consumer responses are becoming more important. The purpose of this research is therefore to expand the findings of previous studies by comparing the advertisement effects from mere virtual presence with product experience (MVPE) with those from social virtual product experience (SVPE). We employ two moderators (imagery instructions and imagery-processing models) to analyze various VPE types and advertisement effects and design a factorial online experimental design to validate the research model and hypotheses. Of the 504 total participants recruited for this experiment, study 1 first examines a sample of 310 participants to compare different VPE types on Facebook, while study 2 looks at a sample of 194 participants by assessing Facebook and Pinterest social media platforms. This study finds that different imagery instruction and imagery-processing models’ moderators help determine the 1 Corresponding author: Yu-Hsin Chen, Department of International Business, Shih Chien University. Email: chenyuhsin@g2.usc.edu.tw. The authors thank the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of China, Taiwan for financially supporting this research under Contract NO. 102-2410-H-027-013-MY2. DOI: 10.3966/102873102021064101001 2 The influence of different virtual product experience types on advertising effect: Imagery instructions and imagery-processing model as moderators influences that different combinations of VPE types and social media platforms have on advertisement effects. Therefore, businesses can target to improve their community management by periodically posting advertisements on social media platforms using multimedia or text that trigger mental imagery.