At the movies, on the web: An investigation of the effects of entertaining and interactive web content on site and brand evaluations

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of including entertaining and/or interactive content on evaluations of automotive Web sites and automotive brands. Research participants visited and evaluated four Web sites from major automotive manufactures. The four sites exhibited varying degrees of entertaining content and interactivity. The highly entertaining site (which included a mini, suspenseful movie) was associated with the most positive site evaluations, greatest intent to return to the site, and highest levels of arousal, as compared to the three other sites that included video product footage only, video footage and audio, or video footage and audio with an interactive feature. Significant increases in purchase intent were associated only with the brand featured in the site with the mini movie.