From left: Xiaohui (Stella) Sun, Cherry Kwunyeun, Jing (Joyce) Qin, Nopakoon (Tum) Visitrattakul

Personal Statements

Cherry Kwunyeun (on her interest in Visualization and Eye Tracking):

       My personal interest in the application of the findings from this study are towards the field of social entrepreneurship and cultural sustainability. I started a handbag business, Blumpari, while here at Smith and Dr. Wedel encouraged me to apply visual marketing research principles to my entrepreneurial interests and to form generalizable information, information that can be applied across various sectors. This study gave me factors to consider when forming marketing material that communicate social impact. Many have told me to tell the story behind the product which is contrary to my personal preference to let people interpret designs and products in whatever manner they wish to. The findings have opened my eyes to the importance of textual and contextual information. My hope is that this technology can be used further to understand how to give visibility to populations/issues that are otherwise invisible or marginalized. For example, my friend referred me to a friend's non-profit site that has visually compelling pictures of fresh water filtration for children in Myanmar. I vividly remember the pictures, but cannot remember the name of the organization and neither could my friend. That is a marketing failure with unfortunate ramifications. As an educational institution, if we are able to offer knowledge and models that address issues such as this, that would be a true contribution.
        From a marketing field of interest perspective, the use of Eyetracking Lab as a facility that is pioneering the field of Visual Marketing is Dr. Wedel's expertise and we are lucky to have such access. Visual Marketing covers things such as how an organization visually presents its website/e-commerce site, in-store display merchandising, to print advertisement. This technology was of interest to me b/c I have done visual merchandising and was surprised by its influence on consumer purchasing behavior and perception at an operational and strategic level. Some say that if a product is good, it should sell itself. However, a visual marketer will say that it depends on how a product is visually displayed and communicated that leads consumers to buy.
       The study was an opportunity to learn how to apply cutting edge technology to quantify my tacit knowledge from my work experience in this field and background in art and business. Usually, business school marketing classes teach how to use traditional Research and Development survey and analysis techniques on consumer product preferences as a way to increase the success of product launches and sales. However, based on my experience and other professionals in the field of visual marketing, it is possible to strongly influence purchasing decisions based on visual triggers offered to consumers independently of product R&D. The power of Visual Marketing is still grossly underestimated and eyetracking is a tool which connects and quantifies all direct and indirect activities that lead to consumer purchasing and decision making behavior.

Nopakoon (Tum) Visitrattakul:

       My interest in this study lies in the field of marketing analytics in which we use data in order to address strategic marketing issues. Web usability and optimization is one of the key issues for many organizations. They invests huge amount of money in developing websites to communicate their organizational values and product information. These investments would be ineffective if the websites cannot attain users’ attention or the design is too complicated so that users get lost or cannot find what they are looking for.
       Cherry Kwunyeun introduced me to Dr. Wedel and the Eye-tracking Lab at Robert H. Smith School of Business. Cherry encouraged me to participate in this study which allowed me to apply my data analytics skill in real on-line marketing projects. With the eye-tracking technology, we can quantify fixations or gaze time on each element of the webpages. Otherwise, we would have to rely on basic web analytics matrics, such as click-through, visibility time, or impression, which may not best represent users’ actual attentions on webpages. We, then, are able to analyze the eye-tracking data using statistical models in order to develop behavioral inferences which will be used in subsequent development of the websites.