An Empirical Analysis of the Joint Effects of Shoppers’ Goals and Attribute Display on Shoppers’ Evaluations

Abstract

This article develops a decision-making framework that highlights how display of numeric attribute information (e.g., display of calorie information) and shoppers’ goals (i.e., having a diet focus vs. a taste focus) jointly influence shoppers’ choices and preferences. Across two sets of studies, including a field study involving the launch of a new Coca-Cola product, the authors show that when food items are displayed in an aligned manner (i.e., when food items with lower-value calorie information are displayed below food items with higher calorie values), shoppers assign more importance weight to calorie gap information. In turn, higher importance weight assigned to calorie gap information leads diet-focused shoppers to relatively prefer low-calorie food items but leads taste-focused shoppers to relatively prefer higher-calorie food items. The third set of studies shows that this decision-making framework has widespread applicability and is relevant in any domain in which advertising, retail, and online displays show comparisons of numeric attribute information.

The DAST Framework for Retail Atmospherics: The Impact of In- and Out-of-Store Retail Journey Touchpoints on the Customer Experience

“…In examining these various elements of the DAST framework, it is important for researchers to continue acknowledging the role of signage, including directional signs, information posts, and promotions. Recent research highlights the importance of the presentation of numeric attributes on shelves, such as the influence of a vertical position of one attribute relative to a comparison attribute (Guha et al 2018a), the horizontal position of price relative to a prior price (Biswas et al 2013), or the way the offer is framed (Guha et al 2018b). It would be helpful to understand how different signage designs might be enhanced or attenuated by other DAST elements (e.g., trialability).…”

Retailer Marketing Communications in the Digital Age: Getting the Right Message to the Right Shopper at the Right Time

“…Product displays can impact perceived variety (e.g., horizontal vs. vertical; Deng et al 2016) and perceived quality (Valenzuela and Raghubir 2009). Displaying a product with a higher value on a quantitative attribute (e.g., number of calories) above one with a lower value (Guha et al 2018) can lead to greater importance weights assigned to that attribute do to the ease of subtracting one value from the other when the products are displayed in this way.…”

The Shift from Financial to Non-financial Measures During Transition into Digital Retail – A Systematic Literature Review

“…Also, non-English written articles and articles without any relevance on retail industry as the field of research or articles not providing a retail-performance measure-relationship were excluded as well. Excluded was for example a study about customer decision context ("shopper's goals") with no relation and discussion about subsequent retail performance (Guha et al 2018). In the same step, all abstracts of the remaining articles were screened regarding context.…”