Mouse tracking and consumer experience: exploring the associations between mouse movements, consumer emotions, brand awareness and purchase intent

Consumer emotions and brand awareness are closely linked to the online advertising experience. Interactivity can enhance consumers’ engagement with social media sites and brands. However, there is a lack of research on evaluating consumers’ experience in social media interactive campaigns. To address this gap, the study proposes using mouse tracking as an unobtrusive method to collect consumers’ behavioural responses while interacting with gamified campaigns. The study involved 21 users who completed two experimental tasks, during which mouse data and explicit self-reported responses about their emotional states, brand awareness, and purchase intent were collected. Thirteen mouse features were calculated, including time between clicks, time between movements, speed, acceleration, total number of clicks, total number of movements, and total number of pauses. The study found that fast movements and a low number of actions were associated with a positive user experience in terms of brand awareness and intention to buy or recommend the product, while slow movements and long or frequent pauses were associated with negative emotions such as stress, frustration, and confusion. The findings indicate that mouse tracking can be a valuable tool for assessing brand engagement and the emotional dimensions of users’ interactions with gamified marketing campaigns.