All eyes on me : Predicting consumer intentions on social commerce platforms using eye-tracking data and ensemble learning

Understanding what information is important for consumers when making a purchase-related decision has been a key question for researchers and practitioners ever since the advent of empirical research in commerce. Nevertheless, our knowledge of what information is important has been formed primarily through post-purchase conscious capturing approaches, such as surveys and questionnaires. To overcome these limitations, we ground this research on an exploratory study that captures eye-tracking data during a decision-making task of product selection. Grounded on the dynamic attention theory, we utilize different information types and formats present on a popular social commerce platform, to identify elements which are important when deciding about online product purchase decision. Specifically, we employ a series of prediction algorithms and use an ensemble learning setup to predict the aspects that contribute to product selection by consumers. Our analysis highlights the most important informational cues to accurately predict product selection among alternatives. In addition, the results showcase how such elements shift in importance during the temporal sequence of comparing different product alternatives. Our results provide insight into how we can understand the journey of decision-making for social commerce customers when navigating through information to select a product. In addition, it opens the discussion about the shifts that eye-tracking in combination with machine learning can create for researchers and marketers.