The effects of a dividing line in a product assortment on perceived quantity, willingness to buy, and choice satisfaction

Abstract

Many retailers use seemingly innocuous dividing lines to separate product alternatives on their websites or product catalogs. Although previous research on advertising design has focused on the impact of dividing lines on symbolic meanings or perceived categorization, the present research argues that, beyond symbolic or categorical functions, a dividing line can influence consumers' perceived quantity of the product alternatives displayed. Across 10 studies (including an eye-tracking study and three additional studies reported in the Supporting Information Appendix), our results show that consumers perceive a smaller number of products displayed on a page when these products are separated by a dividing line compared to when they are not. This effect occurs because the dividing line separates the products into top versus bottom (or left vs. right) segments, such that participants' visual attention is largely drawn to the top (or the left) where their eyes first fixate. Consequently, participants tend to estimate the total number of items based on the subset they pay attention to. In addition, the effect is attenuated when participants' attention is directly drawn to the segment they have previously neglected and can hold regardless of line orientation. Finally, it can have several marketing outcomes, such as higher willingness to buy and lower post-choice satisfaction.

The impact of anchor characteristics on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for food—an empirical study

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Bring it on! Package shape signaling dominant male body promotes healthy food consumption for male consumers

“…Then they rated the same purchase intention questions ( α = 0.89) and intrasexual competition questions ( α = 0.84) as in Study 2. After that, the package's perceived quantity was measured by a single item adopted by Ouyang et al (2022). The package's perceived dominance, esthetic appeal, weight, and preference were also measured.…”

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“…Furthermore, given that changes to visual sensory elements are easy, understanding these visual sensory aspects of marketing has important practical relevance (Fürst et al, 2021; Jia et al, 2017; Ouyang et al, 2022). However, as a key aspect of marketing that is closely linked to performance, visual display decisions are currently underexplored and thus require further research (Jia et al, 2023).…”