Conclusion
This paper has explored the concept of interactive, visual rhetoric, how it is applied in advertising, and how it may ultimately be applied in the digital world to provoke curiosity and increase brand liking for consumers. Research on visual stimuli, information processing, interactivity and individual consumer differences has all been presented in an effort to construct a broad, strong shoulder to stand on during the testing of this research idea. It has been claimed by previous researchers (Ketelaar et al., 2004; Phillips, 2000) that consumers find open advertisements to be intriguing bits of popular culture that break through the clutter and stand out from standard, verbally messaged promotional material. In doing research to test the proposed schema of open online advertising processing within a website environment, it is posited that visual tropes will be an effective manner by which to make a positive communication impact with online consumers. Currently, it has been shown that such messaging induces intrigue via magazine advertisements. Future research in this area will determine whether such effects can be achieved in the digital arena. Will the self-paced, internally controlled nature of the Internet be the perfect home for such implicit advertising techniques? Only the research will tell.
As it stands now, digital designers have two new persuasion tools that can be used together or separately to increase information finding success and website stickiness for their clients. Future research will determine how these techniques can be best deployed in the online setting.
For more information on sources used for this review, please visit the references page.
For more information on the author of this paper, please visit the About the Author section. Note: a portion of the literature review presented here was revised based on content previously presented in my Master's Thesis, published Spring 2004.
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