Executive Summary
Many retail environments offer multiple product types of products (e.g., DVDs, magazines, books, electronics), and consumers usually browse one or more departments before making a selection in another department. Moreover, retailers can display these products in broad or narrow assortments or categories in a store or on Web page. How does the organization of products in one department influence consumers’ evaluations and choices in another, unrelated department? This research finds that the width of product category assortments that consumers are initially exposed to influences their subsequent purchase decisions about unrelated products.
Imagine a consumer, who after walking through the DVD aisle, stops to evaluate a new product in the electronics section. The movies in the DVD aisle can be displayed in broad category groupings, such as comedy or drama, or in narrow category groupings, such as dark comedy, romantic comedy, courtroom drama, or historical drama. The current research suggests that consumers’ use of product information and their resultant choices while evaluating the new electronics product are influenced by whether they have been previously exposed to DVDs that have been grouped in broad versus narrow categories. In particular, consumers previously exposed to broad categories base their decisions on fewer pieces of information that are particularly salient. In contrast, consumers who have previously been exposed to narrow categories spontaneously employ more pieces of information. Because of this, consumers who are first exposed to more narrow categories subsequently make more balanced (and less biased) decisions. For example, consumers who have been previously exposed to narrow categories later consider both the riskiness and innovativeness of new products when deciding whether to purchase them, whereas consumers who have been previously exposed to broad categories tend to consider only the aspect that is more salient (e.g., either only the innovativeness or the riskiness of the new product).
Biography
Gülden Ülkümen is Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California (USC). She received her PhD in Marketing from New York University. Her research interests include consumer budgeting and savings decisions, mental accounting, new product adoption, antecedents and consequences of categorization processes, and the effects of feelings of confidence on the outcome and quality of consumer decisions. At USC, she teaches the Consumer Behavior class for undergraduate students. Her research has been published in Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Marketing Research. She has received the best-paper award by the American Marketing Association’s Advanced Research Techniques Forum in 2008. She is currently serving on the editorial board of Journal of Consumer Psychology.
Amitav Chakravarti is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Stern School of Business at New York University (NYU). He received a BA in Economics from the University of Bombay, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (New Delhi), and a PhD from the University of Florida. His primary research areas include categorization and decision making, prechoice screening and consideration sets, generic versus brand advertising, similarity and cognition, consumer behavior in high-uncertainty markets, consumption of products with a corporate social responsibility association, and effects of physical environments on cognitions and attitudes. In recognition of his research contributions, he was recently awarded the Young Scholar Award by the Marketing Science Institute, the inaugural Google-WPP Marketing Research Award, and the Advanced Research Techniques Forum Best Paper Award. At NYU, he teaches the Marketing Core class for the full-time MBA graduate students and the Introduction to Marketing class for undergraduate students.
Vicki G. Morwitz is Research Professor of Marketing in the Stern School of Business at New York University. She received a BS in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Rutgers University, an MS in Operations Research from Polytechnic University, and an MA in Statistics and a PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include the effects of responding to and exposure to market research surveys on attitudes, intentions, and behavior; the relationship between purchase intentions and purchase behavior; and behavioral aspects of pricing. She teaches the marketing core, marketing research, marketing of technology-based products, and doctoral classes in judgment and decision making. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, and Marketing Letters. She has worked at IBM, Prodigy Services, and RCA.
Journal of Marketing Research, Volume 47, Number 4, August 2010
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