Master thesis research about the impact of the assortment structure, attentional scope, and consumers’ traits on the location of the selected product

1. Can product location really make a
difference?
The impact of the assortment structure, attentional scope, and
consumers’ traits on the location of the selected product
University of Groningen
MSc Marketing Management
Gréta Gonda
July 1st, 2016

2. 1/7/2016 | 2
Introduction
• Retailers’ assortment planning – impact on profit, CLV, customer experience (Mantrala et al., 2009)
 Understand how consumers’ make decisions – location influences choice
• Choice overload: too-much-choice-effect (Iyengar and Lepper, 2000; Kahn et al., 2014)
 Position on the shelf can influence product choice
• Previous research: „ideal shelf position” is inconsistent to date (Bar-Hillel et al., 2015)
„Location, location, location”
(Bar-Hillel, 2011)

3. 1/7/2016 | 3
Research question
How the location of the selected product is influenced by the assortment structure,
consumers’ goals and personality traits?
• Attentional scope:
shopping with a salient goal (narrow) vs. being ‘on the fly’(broad) (Fujita and Trope, 2014; Gable
and Harmon-Jones, 2011)
• Assortment structure:
evidently equivalent vs. non-equivalent
• Impulsiveness, openness to experience: responsiveness to environmental cues
Choice requires deliberation (Bar-Hillel, 2015),
primacy-recency effect (Ert and Fleischer, 2014)
Minimizing mental and physical efforts
(Christenfeld, 1995),
center-stage heuristic (Valenzuela and Raghubir, 2009)

4. 1/7/2016 | 4
Conceptual Model (1)
Hypotheses
H1 Assortment structure influences the location
of the selected product
Evidently equivalent: Center preference
Non-equivalent: Edge preference
H2 Attentional scope influences the location of
the selected product
Broad attentional scope: Edge preference
Narrow attentional scope: Center preference
H3 The impact of the attentional scope on the
location of the selected product is moderated
by the structure of the assortment
Broad attentional scope – non-equivalent: Edge preference
Broad attentional scope – equivalent: Center preference
Narrow attentional scope: Center preference (no effect)

5. 1/7/2016 | 5
Conceptual Model (2)
Hypotheses
H4 Impulse buying tendency influences the
moderation effect of the assortment structure
Broad attentional scope – non-equivalent assortment: High
impulsiveness strengthens the edge preference
H5 Openness to experience influences the
moderation effect of the assortment structure
Broad attentional scope – non-equivalent assortment: High
openness to experience strengthens the edge preference

6. 1/7/2016 | 6
Methodology
• Four conditions:
• Product location: choice from a planogram
• Questionnaire
- Scales: Costa and McCrae (1992);
Rook and Fisher (1995)
• Two-, and three-way ANOVA
Evidently equivalent
assortment
Non-equivalent
assortment
Narrow attentional scope Condition I Condition II
Broad attentional scope Condition III Condition IV

7. 1/7/2016 | 7
Results
×
× ✓
✓
✓

8. 1/7/2016 | 8
Results
(H3) Interaction effect between
the assortment structure and the
attentional scope was significant
•Edge-preference in broad
attentional scope condition,
from non-equivalent assortment
•Center-preference in broad
attentional scope condition from
evidently equivalent assortment;
in narrow attentional scope
condition

9. 1/7/2016 | 9
Conclusion
• Main and interaction effect between the assortment structure and the attentional
scope on the location of the selected product
• Implications:
 Retailers’ marketing strategy and assortment planning
 Virtual grocery stores: location-based mobile marketing messages
 Online shop: search results organization according to consumers’ goals
• Limitations:
 Drawbacks of a field experiment
 Attentional scope condition was based on
observation of entering/leaving Burger King
 Decision-making is a complex concept – it
can be influenced by other attributes

10. 1/7/2016 | 10
Thank you for your attention!
Are there any questions?