Narrate, Act, and Resonate to Tell a Visual Story: A Systematic Review of How Images Transport Viewers

Abstract

Marketers today are increasingly using storytelling to engage their audiences. However, the design of narrative visuals is often inspired by a text-centric understanding of narratives. Despite the fast increase in visual content and the distinct processing it induces, extant research on visual narrativity remains fragmented, lacking a comprehensive framework to explain how a single still image can convey a narrative. Our literature review addresses this gap through the lens of narrative transportation theory. Based on a systematic review of 64 articles from marketing and adjacent disciplines, the authors propose that an image must narrate, act, and resonate (NAR) to stimulate narrative processing and transport viewers into its narrative. They also identify specific visual features that can facilitate this process and explore how characteristics of the storyteller, story receiver, and story settings can influence the strength of visual narrative transportation (VNT). Finally, the authors highlight affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses of transported viewers. This research extends narrative transportation theory to the visual domain, offering practical design principles that can be easily applied by marketing professionals. It also outlines an actionable research agenda for marketing scholars to further explore visual narrativity.