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The symbolic presentation of products through images in online environments allows consumers to use or experience products only through imagination. Existing literature has demonstrated that providing sensory cues is an effective way to promote imaginative use or experience. However, such an approach seems to have been proposed for product that requires the use of body-related information (e.g. sensory information) for evaluation (high body-involving product). There is less literature on how to facilitate consumers’ imaginative use of product that requires relatively less bodily information (low body-involving product). Considering this, this research proposes a factor that influences the imaginative use of both high and low body-involving products, the character cues in the product image.

In this paper, two studies are conducted to verify the matching effect about presence or absence of character cues with product type (high body-involving vs. low body-involving) in facilitating imaginative use and the downstream effect.

The experimental results indicate that high (low) body-involving product display images are suitable for present (absent) character cues, which can promote the mental imagery of use the product, increase perceived image attractiveness and ultimately increase purchase intentions. The research also verified the influence of distance between the product and the character cues on the above effects.

We expand on the importance of character cues in product display images in an e-commerce environment and enrich the research about imaginative use in online environment.