FROM ADVERTISING TO DECISION-MAKING: THE TRAJECTORY OF CONSUMER VISUAL ATTENTION RESEARCH

Abstract

This paper offers an integrative bibliometric review of consumer visual attention research, with a particular focus on studies using eye-tracking and related methods. Drawing on 1,278 articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection between 1989 and 2022, the study examines publication trends, thematic structures and their evolution, and how issues of distraction and hybrid digital–physical environments challenge traditional views of consumer decision-making. Keyword co-occurrence analyses, combined with thematic mapping across five time periods, are used to identify core research clusters and their interrelations. The results show a strong and accelerating growth of the field since 2014, alongside a marked dispersion of research across journals and countries, confirming visual attention as an established and interdisciplinary area within consumer research. Three enduring thematic pillars emerge: visual attention in multi-attribute decision making, visual attention in advertising and communication, and applied domains such as nutrition information, health warnings and retail environments, while recent work highlights attentional competition and points to emerging questions around distraction and hybrid digital–physical spaces. The paper makes three main contributions. First, it provides a conceptually oriented overview that places visual attention, rather than specific tools, at the center of analysis. Second, it shows how previously separate streams in decision-making, advertising and health communication converge around shared questions of attentional dynamics in complex environments. Third, it develops a future research agenda that explicitly foregrounds distraction and attentional competition in hybrid digital–physical consumer spaces and links these phenomena to emerging technologies and theorydriven studies of attention.