Master thesis Marketing
The effects of scope of attention of
consumers, assortment structures and
product involvement on location of
Relevance
The belief among retailers that large assortments are beneficial for
consumers has led to increasingly large assortments(Oppewal and
Koelemeijer, 2005).
The high costs of large assortments make it very important to
understand how consumers make decisions in order to design and
manage assortments in an optimal way.
The aim of research was to investigate the interplay between scope
of attention of consumers, assortment types and product
Assortment structures
Studies of Christenfeld (1995) and Shaw, Bergen, Brown and Callagher (2000)
found a preference among consumers for the middle products in assortments, called edge aversion.
Research by Dayan and Bar-Hillel (2011) and Ert and Fleischer (2014) showed a
preference for the first or last options in assortments, called edge advantage.
Bar-Hillel (2015) suggests that the different results from these studies can be
explained by the processing of the products.
Expectations:
H1: Consumers will choose the central products more as compared to the edge products
in an evidently equivalent assortment.
H2: Consumers will choose the edge products more as compared to the central products
Scope of attention
The scope of attention influences the thought processes and decisions that
consumers make.
Consequences narrow scope of attention:
- focused thinking on finding a solution (Tyler & Tucker, 1982).
- focus more on the central features of visual stimuli (Tyler & Tucker, 1982). - focus on the central part of their environment (Rowe, Hirsh and Anderson, 2007).
Consequences broad scope of attention:
- increased creativity during processing (Friendman & Förster, 2010). - focus on the global form of visual stimuli (Tyler & Tucker, 1982).
- process their environment broadly (Rowe, Hirsh and Anderson, 2007). - seek more variety among safe alternatives (Kahn and Isen, 1993).
Expectations:
H3: Consumers with a narrow scope of attention will choose the products in the center
more as compared to the products on the edges in an assortment.
H4: Consumers with a broad scope of attention will choose the products on the edges
Interaction effect
Based on the consequences of a narrow scope of attention of consumers, focusing
on the central part of their environment and finding a quick solution for their problems, the assortment structure should not influence these consumers.
Consumers with a broad scope of attention are likely to process all visual stimuli
(Rowe, Hirsh and Anderson, 2007) and their conceptual processing is broadened (Friedman and Förster, 2010). This means consumers with a broad scope of
attention are likely to be influenced by the assortment structure. Therefore:
Expectations:
H5: Consumers with a narrow scope of attention will choose the central options more as compared to the edge options in the equivalent and non-equivalent assortments.
Product involvement
Product involvement is defined as: “A person's perceived relevance of the
object based on inherent needs, values and interests” (Zaichkowsky, 1985; Rickins and Bloch, 1986; Celsi and Olson, 1988).
The perceived relevance and interest influence the way consumers process
information regarding the products. For example:
- Consumers who are highly involved with a product spend more time and energy when deciding which product to buy (Richins and Bloch, 1986;
Schmidt and Spreng, 1996).
- Consumers with high product involvement are likely to process information in depth (Montore-Rios, Luque-Martinez and Rodriguez-Molina, 2008)
- Consumers with high product involvement are more motivated to search for information and compare attributes of products (Ling-yee, 1997).
Expectation:
H7: Consumers with high product involvement choose the edge options more as compared to the central options in assortments, regardless of the scope of
Method
A pre-test was used to develop two assortment
structures
The independent variable of scope of attention of
the participants was manipulated by anticipation
and attainment of a monetary reward (Gable and
Harmon-Jones, 2011)
To measure the construct of product involvement
the scale developed by Laurent and Kapferer
(1985) was used
Results
Eighty four students (39 female, 45 male; Mage
= 25.44 years, SD = 10.21 years), average reward €3,20.
A 3-way ANOVA analysis has been performed
to study the interplay between scope of attention, assortment structures and product involvement on the location of products that participants choose.
Marginally significant (F(1,160) = 2,689, p = 0,103 main effect of scope of attention. The results indicate that there is no interaction effect (F(1,160) = 0,995, p = 0,320).
Results revealed that there is a significant
(F(1,160) = 5,331, p = 0,022) interaction effect between scope of attention, product
involvement and assortment structures on the time participants took while making their decision. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Evidently equivalent assortment Non-equivalent assortment
