Online presentation of product materials: Research of the influences of the different combinations of the popular presentation methods on the fabric perception of clothing

Internet retailers use different online presentation methods to provide detailed product-oriented information. In this way, communicating the materials of products is difficult but necessary for online retailing. The consumer cannot directly touch and feel the products, which may lead to disappointment, as the material of the product they ordered may differ from what they thought based on the online information. Internet retailers need to choose suitable solutions for presenting their products online, which is influenced by various and multi-dimensional factors. Therefore, getting a systematic understanding, which is about advantages and disadvantages of different methods for presenting certain products in order to get a correct impression about the material of products on a website, is really necessary for the companies with online retailing demands. With those considerations, a research starts in the field of online clothing shopping in order to study and deepen the understanding of popularly used presentation methods on web pages for better communicating the materials of products. After the studying of the related researches and 19 popular clothing shopping websites in Europe and China, a experiment with 90 female participants and 12 interviews are conducted to investigate the effects of 5 different combinations of online product presentation methods on consumers' actual and perceived material understanding and further assesses the perceived information and effectiveness of these presentation methods.The quantitative results from the experiment and the insights are analyzed, summarized and interpreted mutually. Not only have the deep understandings been built for the material perception and better material communication of the selected products, but also the insights and inspirations could be used to for further researches related with online material communication. The advantages and disadvantages of different presentation methods for presenting clothing fabric are compared and interpreted, which comes up with a design guideline for helping the company to present the products online. The showcases of the implementation of the design guideline are also made.