The impact of task complexity and task motivation on in-store marketing effectiveness: An eye tracking analysis

A great deal of consumers’ purchasing decisions at the grocery store are made in rather unplanned ways. This offers businesses the opportunity to influence consumers through in-store marketing activities. However, in real-life shopping consumers typically experience many sensory stimuli that could potentially affect their behavior, making it critically important for marketers to understand the mechanisms that lead to product choice. Results of a choice-based conjoint experiment combined with eye tracking show that as the number of products to choose from (task complexity) increases, motivated participants search more for products with superior attention-drawing properties, and increase their liking of such products, i.e., large products and more salient products, and consequently are more likely to choose these products. For less motivated participants this mechanism is limited to large products. Further, for less motivated participants looking at a product influences the decision, in part beyond consciously liking it.