Abstract:

The gaze cues of the eyes of others in the environment is an important social information that can guide the individual's attention and further affect the individual's cognitive processing and memory of the object being looked at. More importantly, gaze clues can also give some new characteristics to the object being looked at, which affects the individual's judgment and attitude towards the value of the object.

The gaze cue effect and the gaze liking effect respectively reflect how the gaze cues affect the individual's cognition and attitude, and further draw on the views of the theory of mind and the shared signal theory to explain the impact of the gaze cues on the consumer's cognition and attitude. Among them, the influence of gaze cues on consumer cognition is mainly reflected in three aspects: (1) Guide consumers to pay attention. Gaze cues, as an indicative clue, can effectively guide consumers' attention. When consumers see the gaze direction of others, they tend to follow the gaze of others and look in the same direction or things. (2) Affect the depth of information processing by consumers. The study found that the gaze direction affects consumers' attention to the brand and text information in the advertisement. When the model in the advertisement is looking towards the product, consumers will look at the brand and text information in the advertisement for a longer time. The length of the gaze reflects the depth of the participants’ processing of the advertisement information, the gaze cues affect the depth of consumer information processing. (3) Affect consumers' memory of advertisements and other information. When the model in the advertisement is facing the product, it will enhance the consumer's memory effect of the brand and advertisement content, and the participants scored higher on the implicit test. The influence of gaze cues on consumer attitudes is mainly reflected in three aspects: (1) influence consumers' evaluation of products/advertising (2) influence consumers' willingness to buy. Regarding how different gaze cues affect consumers' product evaluation or purchase intention, the current research conclusions are not uniform, and there should be more research to further explore possible moderating variables in the future. (3) Affect consumers' evaluation or perception of spokespersons/service personnel. When the front desk staff look directly at the customers, the customers have a better impression of the front desk staff, believing that they are more friendly, warmer, and more trustworthy, and therefore have a better evaluation of the service quality.

Future research can start from the following aspects: (1) Starting from product-related factors, investigate the moderating effect of product types on the effect of gaze cues. (2) From the consumer's point of view, examine whether different gaze cues will further affect consumers' attitudes or impressions towards models/spokespersons, and even their attitudes towards products when consumers feel different levels of loneliness? (3) From the perspective of consumption scenarios, explore how gaze cues affect consumer perceptions and attitudes in a crowded shopping environment? (4) From the perspective of the initiator of the gaze cues, can the gaze cues of the anthropomorphic image have the same effect as the human gaze cues? What impact will the anthropomorphic gaze cues have on consumers?

Key words: gaze cues, gaze cue effect, gaze liking effect, consumer perception, consumer attitude