Executive Summary
Recent trends in marketing have demonstrated an increased focus on in-store expenditures with the hope of “grabbing consumers” at the point of purchase, but does this make sense? To answer this question, the authors experimentally varied the number of facings and the vertical and horizontal position of 12 brands of bar soap and pain relievers (while keeping total shelf space constant) and measured consumers’ eye movements while they were buying and then measured their choice, consideration, past usage, shopping traits, and demographics.
The main result is that the number of shelf facings strongly influences visual attention and, through attention, brand evaluation. For the average brand and consumer, doubling the number of facings increased the chances of looking at the brand by 28%, reexamination by 35%, and choice and consideration by 10%. Increasing the number of facings worked particularly well for frequent users of the brand, for low-market-share brands, and for young, highly educated consumers who are willing to trade off brand and price.
The authors find that the position of facings strongly influences attention (similar to the results for number of facings) but that attention gains from shelf position do not always improve evaluation (unlike the results for number of facings). For example, positioning the brand on the top shelf (versus the bottom one) increased noting by 17% and choice by 20%, showing that a high position helps choice above and beyond its attentional effect. In contrast, placing a brand near the horizontal center of a shelf (rather than on either of its ends) increased noting by 22% but increased choice by 17% only because of negative direct effects on choice.
Because the majority of brand choice decisions are made inside the store, yet consumers evaluate only a fraction of the products available, improved attention through in-store marketing activity should strongly influence consumer behavior at the point of purchase. The results show that this is indeed the case, but only to a certain extent. They also show that improving attention is not a sufficient condition, because not all in-store attention drives choice. In contrast, out-of-store factors influence visual attention but much less than in-store factors. This is consistent with prior research showing the primacy of bottom-up factors in guiding visual attention and search among brands in supermarket displays. However, out-of-store factors have a much stronger impact than in-store factors on evaluation, and only a small fraction of this impact is mediated by attention.
Thus, the overall picture that emerges is that of “trench warfare,” in which large battles for attention are waged every day but the battle lines of market share change very slowly. From a methodological point of view, the findings underscore the importance of combining eye-tracking and purchase data to obtain a full picture of the effects of in-store and out-of-store marketing at the point of purchase.
Biography
Pierre Chandon is Associate Professor of Marketing at INSEAD (with tenure), which he joined in 1999. He was Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania (2005–2006) and in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (2004–2005). He holds a PhD from HEC Paris and an MBA from ESSEC. His primary research interests focus on the effects of marketing on food consumption and obesity and consumer in-store decision making. He has published articles in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Consumer Research. He is an associate editor of Journal of Consumer Research and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Recherche et Applications en Marketing. His research and case studies have won numerous awards, including an honorable mention in the 2005 Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award and the ECCH best-case award in 2006 (marketing category), 2007 (marketing category and overall award), and 2008 (overall award).
J. Wesley Hutchinson is Stephen J. Heyman Professor and Professor of Marketing in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has degrees in Psychology from Stanford University (PhD) and Duke University (BS). His research interests focus on consumer and managerial decision making, particularly the interrelationships among attention, learning, confidence, decision making, and expertise in repeated choice environments. He publishes articles in various business and psychology journals and teaches courses in new product development, the social impact of marketing, and research methods.
Eric T. Bradlow is currently K.P. Chao Professor, Professor of Marketing, Statistics, and Education, and Co-Director of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative in the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School in 1988, an AM in Mathematical Statistics in 1990, and a PhD in Mathematical Statistics in 1994 from Harvard University. He joined the Wharton faculty in 1996. On January 1, 2008, Eric took over as editor-in-chief of Marketing Science. He was recently named one of eight inaugural University of Pennsylvania Fellows, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, a Fellow of the American Education Research Association, a Fellow of the Wharton Risk Center, and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. He is past chair of the American Statistical Association Section on Statistics in Marketing, is a statistical Fellow of Bell Labs, and was previously named DuPont Corporation’s best young researcher. His academic research interests include Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and developing new methodologies for unique data structures with application to business problems, education, and psychometrics and health outcomes.
Scott H. Young is President of Perception Research Services (PRS), a company that conducts more than 600 consumer research studies annually to help companies develop, assess, and enhance their packaging and point-of-sale marketing efforts. Scott leads PRS’s efforts in implementing qualitative, quantitative, store-based, and Web-based research programs on behalf of Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, and Diageo, among many other clients. He also regularly authors articles regarding packaging and point-of-sale research, which have appeared in The Design Management Journal, Brand Packaging, and Package Design.
Journal of Marketing, Volume 73, Number 6, November 2009
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