IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jouret/v90y2014i4p524-537.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Beauty in the Aisles of the Retailer? Package Processing in Visually Complex Contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Orth, Ulrich R.
  • Crouch, Roberta C.

Abstract

Visual appeal is an important consideration in the design of brand packages because attractiveness guides behavior. The visual complexity of a context (i.e., the quantity, irregularity, detail, and dissimilarity of objects) in which a retailer displays a package may impact its attractiveness by influencing attention and processing fluency. Employing consumer samples, and stimuli ranging from the abstract to the realistic, three studies provide evidence that people process a package more fluently, thus increasing its attractiveness, when it is presented in a low rather than high complexity context. This effect is more pronounced with inherently appealing packages, and with people who are more field-dependent or pursuing utilitarian shopping goals. Study 1 establishes effects by employing psychometric measures and abstract stimuli; study 2 corroborates findings with another product category and realistic stimuli; and study 3 complements psychometric measures with eye tracking data to demonstrate that visually more complex contexts divert viewer attention, hereby lowering processing fluency and target attractiveness. The authors discuss the theoretical contribution and strategic insights the research provides for retailers, brand managers, and designers.

Suggested Citation

  • Orth, Ulrich R. & Crouch, Roberta C., 2014. "Is Beauty in the Aisles of the Retailer? Package Processing in Visually Complex Contexts," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 90(4), pages 524-537.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:90:y:2014:i:4:p:524-537
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2014.05.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435914000335
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretai.2014.05.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J.J. Brakus & B.H. Schmitt & L. Zarantonello, 2009. "Brand Experience: What Is It? How Do We Measure It? And Does It Affect Loyalty?," Post-Print hal-00799102, HAL.
    2. Babin, Barry J & Darden, William R & Griffin, Mitch, 1994. "Work and/or Fun: Measuring Hedonic and Utilitarian Shopping Value," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(4), pages 644-656, March.
    3. Aparna A. Labroo & Ravi Dhar & Norbert Schwarz, 2008. "Of Frog Wines and Frowning Watches: Semantic Priming, Perceptual Fluency, and Brand Evaluation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(6), pages 819-831, October.
    4. Atalay , Selin & Onur Bodur , H. & Rasolofoarison , Dina, 2012. "Shining in the Center: Central Gaze Cascade Effect on Product Choice," HEC Research Papers Series 978, HEC Paris.
    5. Cassie Mogilner & Tamar Rudnick & Sheena S. Iyengar, 2008. "The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers' Perceptions of Assortment Variety and Outcome Satisfaction," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(2), pages 202-215, June.
    6. Boyd, D. Eric & Bahn, Kenneth D., 2009. "When Do Large Product Assortments Benefit Consumers? An Information-Processing Perspective," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(3), pages 288-297.
    7. Selin Atalay & H. Onur Bodur & Dina Rasolofoarison, 2012. "Shining in the Center: Central Gaze Cascade Effect on Product Choice," Post-Print hal-00758534, HAL.
    8. Jan R. Landwehr & Aparna A. Labroo & Andreas Herrmann, 2011. "Gut Liking for the Ordinary: Incorporating Design Fluency Improves Automobile Sales Forecasts," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 416-429, 05-06.
    9. Mulhern, Francis J. & Leone, Robert P., 1990. "Retail promotional advertising : Do the number of deal items and size of deal discounts affect store performance?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 179-194, November.
    10. Janiszewski, Chris & Meyvis, Tom, 2001. "Effects of Brand Logo Complexity, Repetition, and Spacing on Processing Fluency and Judgment," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 28(1), pages 18-32, June.
    11. Orth, Ulrich R. & Malkewitz, Keven, 2012. "The Accuracy of Design-based Judgments: A Constructivist Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 421-436.
    12. Alokparna Basu Monga & Deborah Roedder John, 2007. "Cultural Differences in Brand Extension Evaluation: The Influence of Analytic versus Holistic Thinking," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(4), pages 529-536, December.
    13. A. Selin Atalay & H. Onur Bodur & Dina Rasolofoarison, 2012. "Shining in the Center: Central Gaze Cascade Effect on Product Choice," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 39(4), pages 848-866.
    14. Benjamin Scheibehenne & Rainer Greifeneder & Peter M. Todd, 2010. "Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(3), pages 409-425, October.
    15. Veryzer, Robert W, Jr & Hutchinson, J Wesley, 1998. "The Influence of Unity and Prototypicality on Aesthetic Responses to New Product Designs," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(4), pages 374-394, March.
    16. Rik Pieters & Michel Wedel & Jie Zhang, 2007. "Optimal Feature Advertising Design Under Competitive Clutter," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(11), pages 1815-1828, November.
    17. Clement, Jesper & Kristensen, Tore & Grønhaug, Kjell, 2013. "Understanding consumers' in-store visual perception: The influence of package design features on visual attention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 234-239.
    18. Alexander Chernev, 2006. "Decision Focus and Consumer Choice among Assortments," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(1), pages 50-59, June.
    19. Verhoef, Peter C. & Lemon, Katherine N. & Parasuraman, A. & Roggeveen, Anne & Tsiros, Michael & Schlesinger, Leonard A., 2009. "Customer Experience Creation: Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 31-41.
    20. Cassie Mogilner & Tamar Rudnick & Sheena Iyengar, 2008. "The Mere Categorization Effect: How the Presence of Categories Increases Choosers' Perceptions of Assortment Variety," Economics Working Papers 0070, Institute for Advanced Study, School of Social Science.
    21. Jeremy M. Wolfe & Todd S. Horowitz & Naomi M. Kenner, 2005. "Rare items often missed in visual searches," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7041), pages 439-440, May.
    22. Stephen J. Hoch & Eric T. Bradlow & Brian Wansink, 1999. "The Variety of an Assortment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(4), pages 527-546.
    23. Keller, Kevin Lane, 1991. "Memory and Evaluation Effects in Competitive Advertising Environments," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 17(4), pages 463-476, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kahn, Barbara E., 2017. "Using Visual Design to Improve Customer Perceptions of Online Assortments," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 29-42.
    2. Roose, Gudrun & Vermeir, Iris, 2023. "Putting spatial product presentation cues on the map: Review and research directions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 155(PA).
    3. Diehl, Kristin & van Herpen, Erica & Lamberton, Cait, 2015. "Organizing Products with Complements versus Substitutes: Effects on Store Preferences as a Function of Effort and Assortment Perceptions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-18.
    4. Hense, Jonas & Hübner, Alexander, 2022. "Assortment optimization in omni-channel retailing," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 301(1), pages 124-140.
    5. Claire Heeryung Kim & Joonkyung Kim, 2021. "The Role of Cause Involvement and Assortment Size on Decision Difficulty via Communal Relationships," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Huddleston, Patricia T. & Behe, Bridget K. & Driesener, Carl & Minahan, S., 2018. "Inside-outside: Using eye-tracking to investigate search-choice processes in the retail environment," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 85-93.
    7. Lacoste-Badie, Sophie & Gagnan, Arnaud Bigoin & Droulers, Olivier, 2020. "Front of pack symmetry influences visual attention," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    8. Orth, Ulrich R. & Malkewitz, Keven, 2012. "The Accuracy of Design-based Judgments: A Constructivist Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 421-436.
    9. Thai, Nguyen T. & Yuksel, Ulku, 2017. "Too many destinations to visit: Tourists’ dilemma?," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 38-53.
    10. Gupta, Shipra & Coskun, Merve, 2021. "The influence of human crowding and store messiness on consumer purchase intention– the role of contamination and scarcity perceptions," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    11. Beneke, Justin & Cumming, Alice & Jolly, Lindsey, 2013. "The effect of item reduction on assortment satisfaction—A consideration of the category of red wine in a controlled retail setting," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 282-291.
    12. Yu, Junwei & Droulers, Olivier & Lacoste-Badie, Sophie, 2022. "Why display motion on packaging? The effect of implied motion on consumer behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    13. Massara, Francesco & Scarpi, Daniele & Melara, Robert D. & Porcheddu, Daniele, 2018. "Affect transfer from national brands to store brands in multi-brand stores," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 103-110.
    14. Myers, Susan D. & Deitz, George D. & Huhmann, Bruce A. & Jha, Subhash & Tatara, Jennifer H., 2020. "An eye-tracking study of attention to brand-identifying content and recall of taboo advertising," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 176-186.
    15. Husić-Mehmedović, Melika & Omeragić, Ismir & Batagelj, Zenel & Kolar, Tomaž, 2017. "Seeing is not necessarily liking: Advancing research on package design with eye-tracking," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 145-154.
    16. Lee, Ha Kyung & Choo, Ho Jung, 2019. "Birds of a feather flocked together look abundant: The visual gestalt effect of an assortment presentation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 170-182.
    17. Pizzi, Gabriele & Scarpi, Daniele, 2016. "The effect of shelf layout on satisfaction and perceived assortment size: An empirical assessment," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 67-77.
    18. Dennis, Charles & Joško Brakus, J. & Gupta, Suraksha & Alamanos, Eleftherios, 2014. "The effect of digital signage on shoppers' behavior: The role of the evoked experience," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 67(11), pages 2250-2257.
    19. Northey, Gavin & Chan, Eugene Y., 2020. "Political conservatism and preference for (a)symmetric brand logos," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 149-159.
    20. Michel Wedel & Rik Pieters & Ralf Lans, 2023. "Modeling Eye Movements During Decision Making: A Review," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 697-729, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:90:y:2014:i:4:p:524-537. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.