Subliminal messages in an online environment.

the paper addresses subliminal messages; more precisely, the effect of subliminal messages on a user in an online environment. The main goals of the paper were: to research the existing work regarding subliminal messages in different environments, to research different ways and effectiveness of subliminal messages implementation, to research the effects of different types of visual subliminal messages on a user within an online environment and to present the most effective implementation of subliminal messages within the online environment. 60 test subjects and 26 control subjects were used during the course of the research. The subjects estimated their desire to own the featured items based on the usage of website containing negative (20 test subjects), or positive (20 test subjects), or mixed subliminal messages (20 test subjects), or no subliminal messages (26 control subjects). Based on the results, it was deducted that the presence of subliminal messages affects the desire of having specific items; especially effective were the positive subliminal messages embedded in the background of the website as the subjects in that scenario on average estimated their desire to own the items was up to almost 50 % smaller than the average estimated desire rated by control subjects which was taken as the objective rating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]