The diploma thesis defines how the graphical information of magazine front pages influences consumer's decision making. Subsequently, the thesis also deals with the suggestion of optimal layout of elements for magazines. Due to above mentioned, the research aims on consumers whose age is ranging from 19 up to 26 years and they study at Mendel University in Brno. Nowadays knowledge and approaches to this topic are covered in theoretical part. In terms of the subject of the thesis the qualitative research were performed. It was based on two tech-niques -- the first one is called eye tracker and latter is in-depth interviewing. In the thesis there are also described individual phases of research and data received. On the basis of obtained information there was done the analysis of general preferences, colour, typography, photos and pictures depicted at the front page. The summarization of research results can be found in the final part of the diploma thesis

SLOVÁČKOVÁ, T. Product placement and its influence on consumer behaviour. Brno, 2015. 205 p. Master thesis. Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics. Thesis supervisor: Ing. Martin Souček, PhD. This diploma thesis deals with product placement in Czech environment and its influence on consumer behavior. Methods of eye-tracking and in-depth interviews have been used in the practical part of this thesis. Based on the results of the con-ducted research, marketing recommendations with possible practical application were created.

This diploma thesis is analysing the influence of packaging and labelling on the behaviour of gluten-free consumers. The research is focused on consumers in the age of 18-40 in the Czech Republic who frequently buy gluten-free products. The goal of this thesis is to create general marketing recommendations for creating and designing the packaging of gluten-free products in order to provide the best buying experience for the customers. Questionnaire survey, eye tracking and in-depth interviews were used as the research techniques to reach this goal.

Based on research on the “McGurk Effect” (McGurk & McDonald, 1976) in speech perception, some researchers (e.g. Liberman & Mattingly, 1985) have argued that humans uniquely interpret auditory and visual (motor) speech signals as a single intended audiovisual articulatory gesture, and that such multisensory integration is innate and specific to language. Our goal for the present study was to determine if a McGurk-like Effect holds true for music perception as well, as a domain for which innateness and experience can be disentangled more easily than in language. We sought to investigate the effects of visual musical information on auditory music perception and judgment, the impact of music experience on such audiovisual integration, and the possible role of eye gaze patterns as a potential mediator for music experience and the extent of visual influence on auditory judgments. 108 participants (ages 18-40) completed a questionnaire and melody/rhythm perception tasks to determine music experience and abilities, and then completed speech and musical McGurk tasks. Stimuli were recorded from five sounds produced by a speaker or musician (cellist and trombonist) that ranged incrementally along a continuum from one type to another (e.g. non-vibrato to strong vibrato). In the audiovisual condition, these sounds were paired with videos of the speaker/performer producing one type of sound or another (representing either end of the continuum) such that the audio and video matched or mismatched to varying degrees. Participants indicated, on a 100-point scale, the extent to which the auditory presentation represents one end of the continuum or the other. Auditory judgments for each sound were then compared based on their visual pairings to determine the impact of visual cues on auditory judgments. Additionally, several types of music experience were evaluated as potential predictors of the degree of influence visual stimuli had on auditory judgments. Finally, eye gaze patterns were measured in a different sample of 15 participants to assess relationships between music experience and eye gaze patterns, and eye gaze patterns and extent of visual on auditory judgments. Results indicated a reliable “musical McGurk Effect” in the context of cello vibrato sounds, but weaker overall effects for trombone vibrato sounds and cello pluck and bow sounds. Limited evidence was found to suggest that music experience impacts the extent to which individuals are influenced by visual stimuli when making auditory judgments. The support that was obtained, however, indicated the possibility for diminished visual influence on auditory judgments based on variables associated with music “production” experience. Potential relationships between music experience and eye-gaze patterns were identified. Implications for audiovisual integration in the context of speech and music perception are discussed, and future directions advised.

xx, 191 p. : ill. (some col.) A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Visual search is an important part of human-computer interaction (HCI). The visual search processes that people use have a substantial effect on the time expended and likelihood of finding the information they seek. This dissertation investigates visual search through experiments and computational cognitive modeling. Computational cognitive modeling is a powerful methodology that uses computer simulation to capture, assert, record, and replay plausible sets of interactions among the many human processes at work during visual search. This dissertation aims to provide a cognitive model of visual search that can be utilized by predictive interface analysis tools and to do so in a manner consistent with a comprehensive theory of human visual processing, namely active vision. The model accounts for the four questions of active vision, the answers to which are important to both practitioners and researchers in HCI: What can be perceived in a fixation? When do the eyes move? Where do the eyes move? What information is integrated between eye movements? This dissertation presents a principled progression of the development of a computational model of active vision. Three experiments were conducted that investigate the effects of visual layout properties: density, color, and word meaning. The experimental results provide a better understanding of how these factors affect human- computer visual interaction. Three sets of data, two from the experiments reported here, were accurately modeled in the EPIC (Executive Process-Interactive Control) cognitive architecture. This work extends the practice of computational cognitive modeling by (a) informing the process of developing computational models through the use of eye movement data and (b) providing the first detailed instantiation of the theory of active vision in a computational framework. This instantiation allows us to better understand (a) the effects and interactions of visual search processes and (b) how these visual search processes can be used computationally to predict people's visual search behavior. This research ultimately benefits HCI by giving researchers and practitioners a better understanding of how users visually interact with computers and provides a foundation for tools to predict that interaction. This dissertation includes-both previously published and co-authored material. / Adviser: Anthony J. Hornof

Typically developing humans innately place subjective value on social information and orient attention to it. This can be shown through eye tracking and pupillometry, a method used to show attentional engagement. Social brain development and social preference is present from infancy, and is thought to rely on a carefully balanced network of neurotransmitters and neural connections. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) presents altered neural systems which cause individuals to perceive and process social information differently, but the neurophysiology of this difference remains unclear. Previous research shows atypical gaze patterns, hyperarousal, and lack of orienting to social stimuli in ASD. Since autism is highly comorbid and shares traits with other neurodevelopmental disorders, it is difficult to distinguish aspects of these social processing differences. This study used a group of 35 neuropsychiatric patients to investigate how individuals with autism process social and non-social scenes. Eye tracking and pupillometry measures were collected while participants observed images of natural scenes with or without a person. Participants with autism did not show a pupillary response to social images and were slower to fixate on the face  region than the other participants. Additionally there were correlations between clinical measures of social functioning and the length of time it took to fixate to faces. The results highlight important distinctions of social processing in autism. This thesis proposes a new perspective of looking at the social deficits present in autism spectrum disorder. It suggests reframing the current discussion from two leading hypotheses to a unified approach and formally considering the limitations of differing types of stimuli.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Hospitality Management / Junehee Kwon / With the advancement of the Internet and information technology, consumers have access to a massive amount of information before purchase. In the hospitality industry, consumers frequently search online information to make decisions. However, there has been limited hospitality research exploring the actual information search behaviors in the online setting. The purpose of this research was to assess the actual information search behaviors of consumers when choosing restaurants through consumer review websites. To accomplish the purpose, three mixed-methods were used including eye-tracking experiments (Phase I), qualitative, retrospective think-aloud (RTA) interviews (Phase II), and a scenario-based survey (Phase III). In the eye-tracking experiments, 30 participants were recruited and instructed to conduct restaurant search tasks. Variables included fixation duration, fixation count, and visit count, indicating how long and how often consumers’ attention had been attracted to certain information areas. The eye-tracking data was also visualized through heat maps and gaze plots. Following eye-tracking experiments, RTA interviews were conducted to investigate the underlying thinking process of consumers. A playback of the recorded eye-tracking video was presented to each participant while participants verbalized their thinking process and reasoning of information search behaviors. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through grounded-theory model to identify important information elements. To overcome the limited generalizability of the eye-tracking experiments and interviews, a scenario-based survey was created, and seven hypotheses were developed to evaluate impacts of online reviews, images, and advertisements on consumers’ interests and restaurant visit intentions based on the results of Phases I and II. Restaurant selection scenarios were provided to the participants to look through screenshots of webpages in order to mimic the online environment. The online survey company Amazon MTurk was used for data collection. A total of 406 usable survey responses were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, one-sample Chi-square tests, and visualized heat maps. Eye-tracking experiment results revealed that images, consumer reviews, and filter functions were the top information areas to which consumers paid considerable attention. Advertisements in Yelp also received much attention from participants, but during RTA interviews, advertisements were found to be less impactful for consumers’ decision-making than the number of reviews, images with food items, and consumer reviews. Five out of seven hypotheses in Phase III were supported, indicating that it was mostly consistent with findings of the eye-tracking experiments and interviews (Phase I and II). Specifically, consumers’ interests and intentions to visit restaurants were greater for restaurants with a higher number of reviews, food images, and without advertisements. Consumers also were more interested in extremely rated reviews and preferred evenly-distributed image groups. This study contributes to the existing hospitality literature related to consumer behavior with the utilization of the innovative, combined methods of eye-tracking technology, RTA interviews, and scenario-based survey. This approach allowed the researcher to obtain a holistic view of actual consumer behavior, thinking process accompanying the behavior as well as the verification with large sample. Consumer review websites and restaurateurs were provided with specific recommendations to enhance the online user experience and improve customer satisfaction, respectively.

abstract: Node-link diagrams are widely used to visualize the relational structure of real world datasets. As identical data can be visualized in infinite ways by simply changing the spatial arrangement of the nodes, one of the important research topics of the graph drawing community is to visualize the data in the way that can facilitate people's comprehension. The last three decades have witnessed the growth of algorithms for automatic visualization. However, despite the popularity of node-link diagrams and the enthusiasm in improving computational efficiency, little is known about how people read these graphs and what factors (layout, size, density, etc.) have impact on their effectiveness (the usability aspect of the graph, e.g., are they easy to understand?). This thesis is comprehensive research to investigate the factors that affect people's understanding of node-link diagrams using eye-tracking methods. Three experiments were conducted, including 1) a pilot study with 22 participants to explore the layout and size effect; 2) an eye tracking experiment with 43 participants to investigate the layout, size and density effect on people's graph comprehension using abstract node-link diagram and generic tasks; and 3) an eye tracking experiment with the same participants to investigate the same effects using a real visualization analytic application. Results showed that participants' spatial reasoning ability had significant impact on people's graph reading performance. Layout, size, and density were all found to be significant effects under different task circumstances. The applicability of the eye tracking methods on visualization evaluation has been confirmed by providing detailed evidence that demonstrates the cognitive process of participants' graph reading behavior. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Engineering 2015

abstract: This dissertation offers three essays that investigate consumers’ health-related food choices and behaviors from three different, yet complementary, angles. The first essay uses an eye-tracking experiment to examine consumers’ visual attention to the Nutrition Facts Panels for healthy and unhealthy products. In this essay, I focus on how involvement and familiarity affect consumers’ attention toward the Nutrition Facts panel and how these two psychological factors interact with new label format changes in attracting consumers’ attention. In the second essay, I demonstrate using individual-level scanner data that nutritional attributes interact with marketing mix elements to affect consumers’ nutrition intake profiles and their intra-category substitution patterns. My findings suggest that marketing-mix sensitivities are correlated with consumers’ preferences for nutrient attributes in ways that depend on the “healthiness” of the nutrient. For instance, featuring promotes is positively correlated with “healthy” nutritional characteristics such as high-protein, low-fat, or low-carbohydrates, whereas promotion and display are positively correlated with preferences for “unhealthy” characteristics such as high-fat, or high-carbohydrates. I use model simulations to show that some marketing-mix elements are able to induce consumers to purchase items with higher maximum-content levels than others. The fourth chapter shows that dieters are not all the same. I develop and validate a new scale that measures lay theories about abstinence vs. moderation. My findings from a series of experiments indicate that dieters’ recovery from recalled vs. actual indulgences depend on whether they favor abstinence or moderation. However, compensatory coping strategies provide paths for people with both lay theories to recover after an indulgence, in their own ways. The three essays provide insights into individual differences that determine approaches of purchase behaviors, and consumption patterns, and life style that people choose, and these insights have potential policy implications to aid in designing the food-related interventions and policies to improve the healthiness of consumers’ consumption profiles and more general food well-being. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Agribusiness 2018

Submitted by CECILIO MERLOTTI RODAS null (cecilio.rodas@gmail.com) on 2017-06-18T15:31:47Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE_CECILIO_RODAS_2017.pdf: 44213138 bytes, checksum: 5c54f261af3ea4857bb3687ce8902517 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-06-19T14:41:43Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 rodas_cm_dr_mar.pdf: 44213138 bytes, checksum: 5c54f261af3ea4857bb3687ce8902517 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-19T14:41:43Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 rodas_cm_dr_mar.pdf: 44213138 bytes, checksum: 5c54f261af3ea4857bb3687ce8902517 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-03-03 / A quantidade de páginas disponibilizadas na Web atingiu um tamanho tão volumoso que se tornou mais difícil recuperar informações manualmente, necessitando-se de mecanismos que possam ajudar nesse processo. Nesse contexto, os mecanismos de busca se tornaram indispensáveis, sendo considerados um importante objeto de estudo, especialmente para a área da Ciência da Informação, porque diz respeito à organização e recuperação do conhecimento nesse ambiente. Tendo em vista a utilização do Google como um dos mecanismos de busca mais utilizados, tendo em vista ainda que, de acordo com estudos da Experiência do Usuário e da Semiótica, o ser humano é sensível às informações que lhe são apresentadas, propomos uma pesquisa a fim de investigar como e porque os novos elementos informacionais enriquecidos visualmente e apresentados nas páginas de resultados de mecanismos como o Google, por exemplo, poderiam influenciar o padrão de comportamento dos usuários ao realizar uma busca de informação. Esse estudo inova na área da Ciência da Informação no Brasil ao incorporar a Tecnologia de Eye Tracking a qual permite o rastreamento do olhar em testes com usuários. A investigação foi conduzida a partir do método quadripolar, o qual possibilitou trazer um certo dinamismo à pesquisa, o que foi relevante no desenvolvimento de nosso trabalho. A tecnologia de Eye Tracking registra os dois principais movimentos realizados pelos olhos, sendo eles as fixações e as sacadas, os quais podem criar condições para encontrar padrões de comportamento. Essa tecnologia possibilita que a coleta de dados aconteça de forma muito mais precisa quando comparada com as tradicionais técnicas utilizadas em estudos da Experiência do Usuário, como a verbalização ou a observação direta ou indireta. Tal vantagem se deve ao fato de que o olhar de uma pessoa acontece de maneira natural, sem interferências, podendo chegar ao ponto do usuário se esquecer que seus movimentos estejam sendo observados e registrados. Nossos resultados mostram que os elementos enriquecidos visualmente, apresentados nas páginas de resultado de mecanismos de busca, podem receber maior visibilidade, principalmente o Rich Snippet, o qual conseguiu influenciar a escolha do resultado, estimulando inclusive um olhar mais amplo sobre toda a área da página de resultados, além dos três primeiros resultados. Tais resultados corroboram a atual necessidade, bastante discutida na Ciência da Informação, de que os ambientes digitais deveriam ser desenvolvidos considerando-se a possibilidade de manter seus conteúdos estruturados para que possam se tornar semanticamente mais visíveis pelos mecanismos de busca, o que poderia torná-los mais elegíveis para terem seus conteúdos apresentados nos novos elementos informacionais presentes nas páginas de resultados dos mecanismos de busca. / The number of pages available on the Web has reached such a massive size that it has become more difficult to retrieve information manually, and mechanisms are needed to help in this process. In this context, search engines have become indispensable, being considered an important object of study, especially for the area of Information Science, because they concerns the organization and retrieval of knowledge in this environment. Considering the use of Google as one of the most used search engines, and also considering that, according to studies of the User Experience and Semiotics, human being is sensitive to the information presented, we propose a research in order to investigate how and why the new informational elements enriched visually and presented in the result pages of mechanisms such as Google could influence the behavior pattern of users when performing an information search. This study innovates in the area of Information Science in Brazil by incorporating the Eye Tracking Technology, which allows the tracking of the look in tests with users. The research was conducted from the quadripolar method, which brought dynamism to the research and was relevant in the development of our work. The Eye Tracking technology records the two main movements performed by the eyes, the fixations and the saccades, which can create the conditions to find patterns of behavior. This technology enables a much more accurately data collection when compared to the traditional techniques used in User Experience studies, such as verbalization or direct or indirect observation. This advantage is due to the fact that a person's gaze happens naturally, without interference, and can reach the user's point of forgetting that his movements are being observed and recorded. Our results show that the visually enriched elements presented in search engine result pages can receive greater visibility, especially the Rich Snippet, which has influenced the choice of the result, stimulating even a wider view of the entire page area results, in addition to the first three results. These findings corroborate the current need, much discussed in Information Science, that digital environments should be developed considering the possibility of keeping their contents structured so that they can become semantically more visible by search engines, and the most eligible could have their content available in the new informational elements presented in the result pages of the search engines.