As with every study in the social sciences, this study is context specific.
Furthermore, it is rather specialized: although the authors trust that the DIY context and the example product category were good choices for this research project, this is still a rather special field of retailing. They hence want to caution readers that the results of this study should not be applied universally. Overall, however, there is no inkling as to why the study results should not be as widely applicable as any other similar study.
As was pointed out at the beginning of the chapter, there are different types of satisfaction. Readers have to bear in mind that the study deals
with just one type of consumer satisfaction: satisfaction with the choice of a product. It does not touch, for instance, the satisfaction stemming from using or consuming a product.
The findings highlight the influence of perceived search costs on choice satisfaction in a high-involvement product choice. It could be interesting to check whether the role of search costs is even more prominent in a low- involvement product choice task. The authors also believe further research on potentially moderating factors such as shopping convenience, time con- straints or out-of-stock situations could provide valuable insights on choice satisfaction. In addition, further research highlighting the determinants of anticipated regret could prove relevant.
Future research could test potential determinants of choice satisfaction beyond those incorporated in this model, and could expand the definition of choice satisfaction to include multiple-category decision making rather than single-category decision making (Russell et al. 1999).
However, applying the eye-tracking methodology in satisfaction research appears not to be a too fruitful path to follow. Given the high costs and effort that conducting a field eye-tracking study requires, the authors would rather discourage further research with the methodology in the choice sat- isfaction realm and would suggest to prioritize studying other independent variables, instead.
6. Concluding Thoughts
The dissertation studied in-store decision-making, drawing on an eye- tracking field experiment to test its hypotheses on a sound empirical basis.
Chapter 1.2 introduced the reader to four research questions that were addressed in the main chapters of the dissertation. Let us now return to these questions and their answers, before turning to several overarching concluding thoughts.
Chapters 2 and 3 studied the drivers of attention and evaluation at the POP in a high-involvement product category. The second chapter dealt with the main effects of in-store and out-of-store factors on attention and evaluation, and added a mediation analysis, where attention is treated as a mediator. The underlying research questions of chapter 2 were:
Which in-store and which out-of-store factors have a significant effect on the dif- ferent levels of attention? Which in-store and which out-of-store factors have a significant effect on the different levels of evaluation? Are the effects of in-store and out-of-store factors on evaluation mediated by increased attention or do they influence evaluation directly?
It is sometimes assumed that in-store factors are mainly the drivers of at- tention, and out-of-store factors the drivers of evaluation. In this study, this obviously is not so: Readers have seen in the results of the logistic regression analyses that three patterns appear to exist, along which factors do influence attention and/or evaluation. The first is the one we expected:
an in-store factor drives attention significantly. This is the case for vertical shelf position, a visual merchandising-factor under the control of retailers.
Different vertical positions on the shelf get different amounts of attention.
They do not directly affect evaluation, however. The second pattern we have seen is an in-store factor impacting mainly evaluation, and not attention.
This was the case for the factor product weight, a product attribute which is under control of manufacturers. And the third pattern, which holds for two out-of-store factors, shows that some even drive both attention and evalua- tion significantly. These factors are favorite brand and market share, which again are rather under the influence of manufacturers rather than retailers.
The mediation analysis showed that the effects of several factors on evaluation are significantly mediated by attention. Visual information in- take hence clearly influences how shoppers make their considerations and choices. It follows that those in-store measures that are successfully increas- ing shopper attention, can in fact lead to short-term sales stimulation, on top of their long-term branding impact. Through the mediation analysis, readers have further learned that the attention-mediated effects only sel- dom compete against direct effects, but rather complement them: In all but two cases of significant mediation, the dissertation found complementary mediation effects.
Chapter 3 extended the model of chapter 2 by including a comprehensive analysis of interaction and moderation effects. It sought to answer the fol- lowing research question:
Do interaction or moderation effects play a significant role in the relationship of in-store and out-of-store factors with attention and evaluation?
This chapter tested specifically for interaction effects between the focal vari- ables of the model, and for moderation effects of gender, age, and shopping preferences. The results regarding interaction effects show that significant interaction effects can be found, especially between the product attributes in the model and between a shopper’s willingness to pay and the variable price.
Gender turned out to be a significant moderator – men and women dif- fered in this choice task quite significantly, primarily regarding the influ- ence that product weight, price, and their willingness to pay had on their attention and evaluation levels. Age, on the other hand, did not exercise a significant moderation effect. Neither did the shopping traits that were included in the model.
The fourth chapter undertook a deep dive into the role of in-store atten- tion. Specifically, it studied the link between the degree of in-store attention and a shopper’s likelihood to choose her favorite brand. The relevance of studying this link partially stems from the results of the previous chapters, which have shown that favorite brand is the single most powerful driver of attention and evaluation. The corresponding research question was:
Does more attention paid at the POP lower the likelihood that a shopper chooses her favorite brand?
Here, the regression showed that participants who engage in a more exten- sive search process are less likely to choose their favorite brand. The chapter offered two potential interpretations: It could be that those shoppers who pay more in-store attention are less attached to their favorite brand from the outset; alternatively, it is also possible that the shoppers investing more into their search at the POP are likelier to discover alluring features in the products of brands. Either way, chapter 4 supports the notion that in-store attention can make a difference in in-store choices.
The last main chapter, chapter 5, dealt with questions that are located further downstream the shopper decision-making process. Here, the dis- sertation studied potential determinants of choice satisfaction, i.e. the satis- faction that a shopper gets from making a successful choice. The respective research question that chapter five sought to answer was:
Do anticipated regret, perceived search costs, assortment attractiveness, and the degree of attention paid to products, to information material, and to price informa- tion at the POP have a significant influence on choice satisfaction?
The results of the SEM showed that both anticipated regret and perceived search costs significantly lower choice satisfaction levels among the partici- pants. One attention-related measure turned out to significantly positively influence choice satisfaction (attention to product packages). Nonetheless, the attention-related measures as a whole were clearly not very important for choice satisfaction levels. Obviously, later steps in the shopper decision- making process, dominate attention-related measures, which are constructs usually placed quite early in that process.
Now that the most important findings regarding the specific research questions of the dissertation have been synthesized, let us turn to the over- arching and more general concluding thoughts regarding the dissertation’s contribution to research and to practice.
The dissertation makes several contributions to research of shopper be- haviour. Two main contributions to research stand out:
Firstly, it expands our knowledge regarding shopper behavior in a high- involvement product choice. The holistic research models we adopted in- cluded out-of-store and in-store factors as drivers of shopper behavior.
Moreover, one explicitly scrutinized the role of attention as a mediator between the drivers of shopper behavior and actual evaluation and thus
uncovered the importance of attention in some aspects of in-store decision- making. They showed, for instance, that shoppers who pay a lot of attention at the POP are less likely to choose their favorite brand.
Secondly, however, the dissertation also discovered the limitations of a pure focus on in-store attention. It showed that the most important drivers of choice are out-of-store factors. And we further learned that attention- related variables do not appear to be important determinants of post-choice satisfaction.
But why all that work, sceptics might ask, if retail sales seem bound to move more and more online, anyways? Granted, growth in many areas of retailing, at least in the developed markets, is mostly to be found in the on- line realm, often at the expense of offline sales. However, the usually much larger share of sales still happens offline. Where the pendulum between online- and offline-sales will balance, nobody knows. Deepening our under- standing of the decision-making processes and their ex-post assessment of shoppers in offline-situations surely is and will be highly relevant today and in the foreseeable future. Besides, we witness an increasing cross-channel behaviour of consumers, so even for mainly online-interested retailers, the topic of the dissertation might be of certain bearing.
For practitioners, three key findings of the dissertation are especially relevant:
Firstly, retailers appear to have less influence on in-store decision-making than manufacturers, despite having control over the POP, as out-of-store factors have a stronger impact on in-store decision-making than in-store factors.
Secondly, in-store attention can have an impact on in-store decision- making in the short term, though it might seldom dominate other factors.
This short-term impact comes on top of the well-established long term impact in-store attention can have on brand equity.
And thirdly, attention-related variables are no important determinants of choice satisfaction – that type of satisfaction that is most directly attributed to retailers by shoppers. Shoppers rather care about anticipated regret and search costs that they experience in the choice process.
The dissertation also points to some areas that would warrant further research. Obviously, the experiment focused on one example product category (cordless screwdrivers) and took place in Germany. A natural
extension, therefore, would be to try to replicate the findings also for other product categories (both low- and high-involvement) and for other geog- raphies and cultures.
Methodologically, good extensions of this study would be to also meas- ure perceived in-store attention via a survey in addition to the eye-tracking measurement and to require the participants to actually purchase the chosen product rather than to just state their choice.
Chapter four of this dissertation provided but a first glimpse into the link between brand preference and in-store attention. The dissertation indicates that such a link exists, and future research could further explore its exact nature and strength.
As any retail store is a multi-sensory and multi-cue environment, another obvious extension of this research could be to dive deeper into the role of interactions between the various in-store and out-of-store factors. After all, in shopping, “it’s all about the mix”.
Lastly, the dissertation has shown that conducting a field experiment on shopper decision-making is feasible and leads to meaningful results. The field approach of course has some drawbacks, as it always entails a huge effort and requires some sacrifices in terms of control. But in the end, my conviction is that this approach is superior to experiments in the labora- tory, which can never match the field setting regarding its proximity to real shopping situations. We will more field eye-tracking studies in the future, as the technical abilities are now there, and as the cost of conducting such studies should fall further. For future in-store eye-tracking experiments, it might be fruitful to extend the focus to a more holistic view of the shopper journey, for instance by including secondary placements of a product cat- egory, more than one product category and several shelves, or the shopper’s journey to the shelf.
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