Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres The effects of apparel names and visual complexity of apparel design on consumers' apparel product attitudes: A mental imagery perspective Jung Eun Lee ⁎ , Eonyou Shin Virginia Tech, 240 Wallace Hall, 295 West Campus Drive, Blacksburg, VA 24061, United States of America ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Apparel name Mental imagery Visual complexity Apparel design Product attitudes ABSTRACT Although atypical apparel names, such as “Boyfriend Jeans” and “Cozy Workday Sweater,” have the potential to make consumers purchase more apparel products, there is little research on apparel names in the literature. Applying the mental imagery framework, we examined the moderating effect of the visual complexity of apparel design on the relationship between apparel name and mental imagery, followed by apparel product attitudes. A two apparel names (atypical vs. typical name) × two levels of visual complexity (complex vs. simple apparel design) between-subject experimental design was used. The results showed that for simple apparel designs, mental imagery elaboration and quality were greater for atypical than typical apparel names, while for complex apparel designs, there was no difference in mental imagery across apparel names. We also found that for simple apparel designs, mental imagery evoked by atypical apparel name increased positive apparel product attitudes. 1. Introduction Mental imagery is “a mental event involving visualization of a concept or relationship” (Lutz & Lutz, 1978, p. 611). Mental imagery helps consumers transfer information from long-term to working memory to think about products/situations personally relevant (MacInnis & Jaworski, 1989), and triggers multisensory information, such as sounds, smells, and the tactile (Lutz & Lutz, 1978). Consumers may experience a stimulus indirectly through mental imagery, which may reduce consumers' concerns about their lack of ability to touch and try on garments by enhancing virtual product experiences. Thus, mental imagery can play an important role in an online apparel shopping context. Typical apparel names for consumers (e.g., Oversized Coat, Wool Sweater, and Straight Jeans) include only basic features of the garments to identify the product, such as fit, fabric content, and design details, while atypical apparel names (e.g., Boyfriend Jeans and Cozy Workday Sweater) include cues to generate a sensory connection and make consumers imagine situations in which they wear the garment. During the mental imagery process, the cues from atypical names can help consumers connect the imagery with their preexisting information and experiences stored in episodic memory (e.g., Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977; Spears & Yazdanparast, 2014; Sweller & Sweller, 2006). This preexisting information can lead consumers to imagine the future consumption of products vividly, such as wearing an apparel product to a certain event, and stimulate retrieval of tactile attributes (e.g., tex- ture, feel, and weight) from memory (Peck & Childers, 2003; Spears & Yazdanparast, 2014). Without physical items to touch and feel online, consumers explore apparel images to understand the design and quality of the product (Park & Stoel, 2002). Apparel images can provide visual information that cannot be communicated through verbal information (Pellegrino, Rosinski, Chiesi, & Siegel, 1977) and interact with verbal information to form mental images (Walters, Sparks, & Herington, 2007). In this study, we were interested particularly in online apparel names on mental imagery and its interaction with the visual complexity of apparel design shown in images. Visual complexity refers to the level of complexity of visual elements attributable to their quantity, patterns, and arrange- ments; visual complexity increases with the number of objects and amount of detail in objects (e.g., shapes, textures, orientations, or colors; Hall & Hanna, 2004; Pieters, Wedel, & Batra, 2010). Although visual complexity can have positive effects during the online shopping, such as increasing experiential shopping values (Jeong, Fiore, Niehm, & Lorenz, 2009), in this study, visual complexity is considered as a hin- drance of other information processing (Harper, Michailidou, & Stevens, 2009; Janiszewski & Meyvis, 2001; Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). Thus, we proposed that consumers may not allo- cate cognitive resources sufficient to process apparel names, either ty- pical or atypical names, when a complex apparel design is shown. However, for a simple apparel design, mental imagery based on atypical https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.08.023 Received 3 December 2018; Received in revised form 14 August 2019; Accepted 16 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: eljung@vt.edu (J.E. Lee), eonyous7@vt.edu (E. Shin). Journal of Business Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0148-2963/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Jung Eun Lee and Eonyou Shin, Journal of Business Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.08.023