Deemah Alarabiat

This research aims to investigate the direct and formal effect of visual aesthetics on customers’ willingness to participate in an online marketing campaign, given that visual aesthetics is considered a salient design characteristic that customers tend to refer to when expressing their experience with the online retailer environment. This research study incorporates the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to propose and estimate this direct effect through structural aesthetics TAM model. In order to validate the proposed model, an online survey with interactive experience was constructed utilizing an open-source platform and was primarily sent to scholars specializing in HCI, informatics, user experience, and digital marketing research in the United Kingdom. The data were obtained from 360 participants, and Partial Least Squares (PLS) path modeling using SmartPLS 4 was employed to evaluate the proposed model. The empirical evaluation demonstrated and confirmed the authenticity and novelty of significant direct and formal effects of customers’ perceived visual aesthetics on their willingness to participate in an online marketing campaign (β = 0.462, t = 10.847, p < 0.001), and their usage attitude (β = 0.789, t = 39.622, p < 0.001). These findings highlight the importance of visual aesthetics in online marketing campaign design, suggesting that concise, well-organized, and visually appealing user interfaces is more likely to engage customers than a complex, cluttered one.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Among marketing professionals, the use of Social Networking Sites (SNSs) as a platform for advertising is on the rise, despite ongoing concerns regarding credibility and trust in privacy related to advertising on these sites. Consequently, this study explored how customer perception factors, namely Perceived Interactivity, Advertising Avoidance, and Privacy, affect attitudes towards Facebook advertisements and how these perception factors moderate these attitudes. This research was conducted in Amman, Jordan, and data were collected from undergraduate students enrolled in the Digital Marketing program at Applied Science Private University (ASU) in 2024 using purposive sampling methods via Google Forms. This sample was chosen due to students’ high engagement with social media and their relevance as future marketing professionals, yielding 277 valid responses to be analyzed, and the hypotheses were tested using smart PLS through Structural Equation Modelling. The analysis revealed that Perceived Interactivity, Advertising Avoidance, and Privacy positively impacted attitudes towards Facebook advertisements, with coefficients and significance levels as follows: β = 0.122, t = 5.545, p < 0.003, β = 0.324, t = 2.643, p < 0.002, and β = 0.046, t = 3.833, p < 0.003, respectively. Moreover, credibility was identified as a moderating factor influencing the relationships among Perceived Interactivity, Advertising Avoidance, and Privacy, with significant results of β = 0.043, t = 3.909, p < 0.003, β = 0.055, t = 2.291, p < 0.004, and β = 0.072, t = 2.067, p < 0.001), respectively. This research provides advertising agencies with essential insights for effectively managing online advertising strategies.