The Impact of Animated Mascot Displays on Consumer Evaluations in E-Commerce

Jihyeon Oh and Daehwan Kim ()
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Jihyeon Oh: Division of Smart Healthcare, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Republic of Korea
Daehwan Kim: Division of Smart Healthcare, Pukyong National University, Busan 48513, Republic of Korea

Administrative Sciences, 2025, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-19

Abstract: This study investigates consumer reactions to mascots on e-commerce websites, focusing on how anthropomorphic visual cues influence website satisfaction, revisit intention, and purchase intention. Specifically, we examine how mascot movement affects consumers’ sense of social presence and engagement, as well as the role of team identification in these effects. A 3 (mascot type: none, static, animated) × 2 (team identification: high, low) between-subjects experiment was conducted with 203 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Our findings show that the presence of mascots significantly impacts consumer evaluations, with social presence and engagement acting as sequential mediators. Notably, high team identification moderates the effect of animated mascots on revisit and purchase intentions but does not affect website satisfaction. These results provide valuable theoretical and practical insights for marketing, highlighting the importance of mascot design and movement in enhancing e-commerce experiences.

Keywords: mascot; social presence; engagement; satisfaction; revisit intention; purchase intention; team identification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L M M0 M1 M10 M11 M12 M14 M15 M16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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