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Pictures are natural and effective means of communication among people, computers, and robotics. A pictorial database is a collection of sharable pictorial data encoded in various formats. During the past several years, pictorial databases have attracted growing attention as an important component in building pictorial information systems as well as intelligent information systems. Eight research tasks are presented. They are comparing the numerical and the linguistic variable approaches, examining new linguistic hedges, studying the similarity of various similarity measures, investigating pictorial data compression techniques, performing pictorial data compression using array grammars, applying the entity‐relationship (ER) model to picture description; further investigating the relationship hierarchy for picture representation using ER diagrams, and extracting pictorial knowledge from pictorial databases. The research results may have a major impact on the development of object‐oriented pictorial databases.

This paper delves into evaluating the effectiveness of warning messages as a deterrent against excessive fat consumption. It examines how consumers perceive the fat content of food products when presented with two distinct label types: (1) a textual warning, providing succinct information about the fat content, and (2) a pictorial warning, offering a visual representation that immediately signifies the fat content.

Two quantitative studies were carried out. Study 1 employed a questionnaire to evaluate the efficacy of textual and pictorial warning messages on high- and low-fat food products. Similarly, Study 2 replicated this comparison while incorporating a neuromarketing instrument to gauge participants’ cerebral reactions.

Results indicate that pictorial warnings on high-fat foods significantly deter consumers’ purchasing intentions. Notably, these pictorial warnings stimulate the left prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex, inducing negative emotions in consumers and driving them away from high-fat food items.

While the influence of images over text in shaping consumer decisions is well understood in marketing, this study accentuates the underlying mechanism of such an impact through the elicitation of negative emotions. By understanding this emotional pathway, the paper presents fresh academic and managerial perspectives, underscoring the potency of pictorial warnings in guiding consumers towards healthier food choices.

1. Textual warnings do not seem to discourage high-fat product consumption.

2. A pictorial warning represents the fat content of an equivalent product.

3. Pictorial warnings decrease the intention to purchase a high-fat product.

4. Pictorial warnings determine an increase in negative emotions.

Textual warnings do not seem to discourage high-fat product consumption.

A pictorial warning represents the fat content of an equivalent product.

Pictorial warnings decrease the intention to purchase a high-fat product.

Pictorial warnings determine an increase in negative emotions.

Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information.

The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory.

Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity.

Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms.

The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals.

This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

The tobacco industry consistently opposes measures that would limit their marketing, but provides little empirical evidence to support its position. This paper aims to test claims that pictorial health warnings on tobacco products would be no more effective than text‐only warnings.

Three studies used face‐to‐face interviews with smokers and non‐smokers to compare pictorial and text‐only warnings. Two studies used semantic differential scales to estimate cognitive and affective responses to pictorial and text‐only warnings, and the Juster Scale to provide behavioural estimates. The final study used best worst scaling to compare paired pictorial and text‐only warnings.

Images featuring medical and social images elicited stronger affective, cognitive and behavioural responses than a control, text‐only message. Comparisons of refreshed text and pictorial warnings found the latter elicited stronger reactions while the former produced similar results to the control. Updating text warnings did not render these more effective; however, adding an image to an existing text warning made this more effective than the control.

Arguments advanced by the tobacco industry need empirical analysis to assess their validity.

This study provides evidence that pictorial health warnings are more effective than text warnings and suggests that refreshing the text used in warning labels, the alternative promoted by the tobacco industry, would be less effective than introducing pictorial warnings.

This is the first comparison of pictorial and refreshed text warnings; the findings challenge the tobacco industry's position on tobacco warning labels and contradict arguments used to oppose the introduction of pictorial warning labels.

Commodity display is an important cue for consumers’ prediction of the goods they purchase. Then why does a neat display (compared to a messy one) usually result in better product evaluation? This paper aims to discuss this issue.

By conducting three lab experiments, the authors proved the existence of “the pictorial effect.” In Study 1, the authors used Chinese knots as the material. Chinese knots are commonly used in decoration; therefore, their appearance is of high importance. The authors set a scenario of purchasing Chinese knots to dismantle for teaching how to knot, thus manipulating the importance of appearance into lower condition. The authors measured subjects’ attitude to display picture and product quality evaluation and examine the existence of “the pictorial effect.” In Study 2, the authors changed material to a functional product in daily life – playing cards. The authors used different usage scenarios to manipulate the importance of the playing cards’ appearance (high vs low). For the low importance group, the scenario is playing poker in a dormitory at the weekend; for the high importance group, the scenario is using playing cards to make a hat for a party. The authors add measurements of consumers’ perception of the popularity of product. Study 2 consolidates the conclusion of Study 1 and excludes the popularity inference effect. In Study 3, the authors used a comb as the material, thus manipulating the importance of product appearance through the different instructions on the comb’s packaging (focus on healthy function vs focus on hair appearance enhancement). Study 3 repeated the conclusion in Study 1 and Study 2, and proved the existence of a “display pictorial effect” by showing the main effect, mediation and moderating effect as well.

Current research brings forward the existence and conditions of “the pictorial effect,” i.e. when the goods are neatly displayed (relative to messily), the consumer’s attitude toward the display becomes more positive, hence leading to a higher product evaluation, and the consumer’s attitudes toward the display fully mediate “the pictorial effect”. However, “the pictorial effect” does not always occur; for the importance of the product, appearance plays a moderator role in the effect. If the consumer thinks the product appearance is not important, “the pictorial effect” could not be observed, which means there is no difference in product evaluation between messy and neat display of the commodity, and only when the product appearance is important, does the pictorial effect occur.

The authors have noticed that display is part of the retail environment; therefore, research on how an environment affects human behavior may be valuable to reference. For example, for the experiment designs, especially Study 2, the authors asked participants to imagine making a hat using playing cards, which is a very creative task. In this task, participants may pay attention to creativity, and this may have an effect on product evaluation. According to Vohs et al., orderly environments lead people toward tradition and convention, whereas disorderly environments encourage breaking with tradition and convention – and that both settings can alter preferences, choice, and behavior. Messy displays may favor the product evaluation of some creative products when the situation requires higher creativity. The authors will attempt to test the effect of this factor in future study.

In application, current research supports “the necessity of tally” in the site management of retailing, and further answers the question as to what kind of products need more effort to be kept in a good order in their displays.

For the first time, the authors put forward “the pictorial effect” in product displays. The research provides insight to the underlying process through which merchandise displays can put an effect on the product evaluation, and supplements the contamination theory and popularity theory, thus contributing to the research works on merchandise displays.

This study aims to investigate coolness – a hedonic attribute – in online consumer reviews (OCRs) by exploring the relationship between OCR framing, presence of pictorial images and OCR-perceived coolness. It also demonstrates how reviewers and brands can create or identify cool OCRs.

Two studies – one experimental and the other using archival data from an OCR platform – were used to test three hypotheses on the effect of OCR framing and pictorial images on perceived OCR coolness.

The results reveal that OCRs framed with negative words but reflecting positive views about products are perceived as cooler than OCRs framed with positive words and reflecting positive views. OCRs with pictorial images are perceived to be cooler than those without pictorial images.

Studies on coolness have focused on people and products but not message content. This research links a message’s framing and pictorial images to its perceived coolness in the OCR context. It provides practical suggestions to marketers, coolhunters and individuals interested in creating cool message content.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of highlighting the geographical area in question – through either pictorial or pictorial-textual formats – in print-advertising messages for European Union geographical indication (GI) quality-labelled products.

A 2×3 between subjects factorial design was used to manipulate the type of GI, namely, protected designation of origin vs protected geographical indication, and the region of origin presentation in the advertisement (absent vs pictorial vs pictorial-textual), while measuring participant brand attitude and intention to buy (dependent variables).

Results show a significant main effect of the region of origin presentation on brand attitude and purchase intention. Communicating the region of origin through pictorial cues leads to more favourable responses than when there is no reference to it in the advertisement. The presentation of the region of origin through pictorial-textual cues leads to more positive responses than communication based just on pictorial cues. No interaction effect between the type of GI and the region of origin presentation is found.

The study makes a new contribution in the field of communication about typical food products, since the ability of the geographical area to increase consumers’ purchase intention has not been systematically tested in an advertising context. To date, there is no strong evidence on how effective it is to convey the values of the geographical area through its picture and/or name. On a practical level, the study supports new communication strategies for typical food products in a context where messages tend to use intrinsic advertising cues that emphasize physical product attributes, rather than extrinsic advertising cues that leverage intangible product values.

This paper surveys theoretical and practical issues associated with a particular type of information retrieval problem, namely that where the information need is pictorial. The paper is contextualised by the notion of a visually stimulated society, in which the ease of record creation and transmission in the visual medium is contrasted with the difficulty of gaining effective subject access to the world's stores of such records. The technological developments which, in casting the visual image in electronic form, have contributed so significantly to its availability are reviewed briefly, as a prelude to the main thrust of the paper. Concentrating on still and moving pictorial forms of the visual image, the paper dwells on issues related to the subject indexing of pictorial material and discusses four models of pictorial information retrieval corresponding with permutations of the verbal and visual modes for the representation of picture content and of information need.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the positioning of textual and pictorial design elements on a package affects visual attention (detection time) toward these element types.

The study has a 3×2 (stimulus×location) between‐subjects design. One pictorial and two textual package elements, located on the top right‐ or top left‐hand side of a package, were used as stimuli. Visual attention was measured by eye‐tracking. A total of 199 university students participated. The data were analysed using a two‐way ANOVA and a Pearson's chi‐square analysis with standardised residuals.

The results show that in order to receive the most direct attention, textual elements should be on the left‐hand side of a package, whereas pictorial elements should be on the right‐hand side. This is inconsistent with previous design directions (based on recall), suggesting the opposite element organisation.

Previous research has focused on recall (whether respondents remember having seen package elements) or preference (whether respondents prefer a package based on element positioning). The focus of the present study determined whether respondents actually saw the different elements on a package, and how long it took them to detect such elements. Detection time for certain element types can be viewed as a new and complementary way of evaluating the position of package elements. The paper also addresses whether preference is a result of easy information acquisition.

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels that leverage the risk of obesity as a deterrent against alcohol abuse. It evaluates the impact of three different kinds of warning labels that can potentially discourage alcoholic drinking: (1) a claim, in text format, that cautions consumers about the product (i.e. a responsibility warning statement); (2) a textual warning label, text-format information on the content of the product or the consequences of excessive consumption (i.e. a synthetic nutritional table); (3) a pictorial warning label, an image depicting a food product with a caloric content equivalent to that of an alcoholic beverage.

In Study 1, a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design is used to evaluate the intention to buy different alcoholic cocktails. The stimuli comprised two cocktails that are similar in alcoholic volume, but different in their caloric content. The images of the products were presented across eight warning label conditions and shown to 480 randomly selected Italian respondents who quantified their intention to buy the product. In Study 2, a different sample of 34 Italian respondents was solicited with the same stimuli considered in Study 1, and neuropsychological measurements through Electroencephalography (EEG) were registered. A post hoc least significance difference (LSD) test is used to analyse data.

The results show that only the presence of an image representing an alcoholic beverage's caloric content causes a significant reduction in consumers' purchase intentions. This effect is due to the increase in negative emotions caused by pictorial warning labels.

The findings provide interesting insights on pictorial warning labels, which can influence the intention to purchase alcoholic beverages. They confirmed that the use of images in the warning labels has a greater impact than text, and that the risk of obesity is an effective deterrent in encouraging consumers to make healthier choices.