Changing the screen size of a smartphone can influence the buying preferences of consumers, as well as how much they trust advertisements, a new international study revealed.
Professor S. Shyam Sundar and Professor Ki Joon Kim recruited 120 students in Korea for the study. The first group of students used an Android smartphone with a screen size of 3.7 inches, while the second group used an Android smartphone with a screen size of 5.3 inches.
The participants visited a website to look for a bus schedule. Upon accessing the bus schedule, the website displayed a text or video ad before presenting the schedule. To determine the students' depth of information processing, buying intentions and levels of trust, the researchers asked the participants to answer a questionnaire.
The study, which is featured in the journal Human Communication Research, found that it only takes a small difference in screen size to alter users' levels of trust and buying preferences.
Sundar said that people typically prefer larger screen sizes as they are believed to enhance their experience and increase the amount of information they can take in, but subtle difference in size also affects them in ways they are not aware of.
The group of students who viewed video ads on the Android smartphone with a larger screen tended to experience affective trust. The group who read text ads on an Android smartphone with a smaller screen experienced greater cognitive trust.
Sundar explained that affective trust refers to how a person feels about something while cognitive trust refers to what a person thinks about something. "The difference is between what you think and what you feel," he said.
Researchers expected cognitive trust would be linked to behavioral trust and buying preferences, but they found that in this regard, affective trust was more influential. The participants who used the larger screens were more likely to buy a product.
Sundar said one form of trust is not better than the other, the same way that one screen size is not superior to the other. The two forms of trust indicate the different depths of thinking among mobile users.
"There is a change in the depth of processing," said Sundar. Users who have larger screens process information through a less systematic way, he said. It makes them more susceptible to influences from environmental cues and more likely to be persuaded.
Because of the feeling of immersion, researchers said that users may feel like they are actually part of the advertisement or presentation.
"If you feel like you're there, you may be more inclined to trust things more," said Sundar. "You feel like you're almost in the environment, so it must be real."
Sundar and Kim believe their findings have implications for the application of virtual reality in mobile advertising. It can offer guidelines for developers of wearable devices who are challenged to use small screens to deliver information, they added.
