The effect of images in C2C advertisements: A quantitative study of how different types of images affect consumer behaviour - when purchasing a used car at blocket.se

Abstract: Since the Internet is a relatively new platform for C2C-commerce, our understanding of a buyer's behaviour in this context is incomplete. The purpose of this thesis is to conduct an experiment, mapping the importance images play when selling in C2C. The focus is to investigate how the use of different images affects the consumer's interest toward an advertisement. The study also aims to understand how a smiling person, in the image, influences the interest of the advertisement. In total, five "test ads" were uploaded to Blocket.se, and the the number of clicks on each advertisement and number of e-mails sent to the seller were measured. The results indicate that using an image, no matter the quality, is better than using no image at all. The results further show that the highest level of e-mails sent to the seller was seen among advertisements with images that are qualified as good (with or without a smiling person) and the image qualified as inferior, but including the smiling person. Our findings suggest that a smiling person has no positive impact on clicks or e-mails for an image that is perceived as good. However, they indicate that a smiling person in an inferior image increases the number of clicks as well as e-mails, compared to an inferior image without the smiling person.