A stimulus-organism-response eye-tracking survey of how background-foreground images drive image appeal, product perception, and willingness to pay in e-commerce

The crowded and competitive landscape of e-commerce has intensified the importance of product images in consumer decision making. Although prior work has considered how visual complexity and presentation shape consumer perceptions, background-foreground composition remains underexplored. Existing research suggests that backgrounds can either enhance or undermine product appeal, yet little attention has been given to the conditions under which these effects vary across product categories. This article addresses that gap by examining how product image backgrounds influence visual engagement, image appeal, product perception, and willingness to pay, with particular emphasis on high- and low-involvement complementary products. Grounded in the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, this article positions background-foreground composition as a visual stimulus that drives affective (image appeal) and cognitive (product perception) responses, thereby affecting consumer valuation (willingness to pay). An experimental approach integrated eye-tracking metrics (initial fixation and fixation duration) with survey data from 122 consumers to assess visual attention patterns, demonstrating that background presence, initial fixation, and fixation duration each significantly affect willingness to pay. However, the magnitude of these effects differs by product category, revealing that high-involvement products gain stronger benefits from contextual backgrounds than low-involvement complementary products. These findings contribute by bridging visual engagement data with theoretical perspectives on decision making to refine our understanding of how background-foreground composition in digital marketplaces shapes consumer valuation, thereby extending consumer behavior, e-commerce, and visual marketing scholarship and equipping e-commerce platforms with actionable strategies to optimize product presentation based on product involvement and decision-making processes.