Synliggørelse af produkter i dagligvarebutikker: Effekten af placering og skiltning på forbrugeres visuelle opmærksomhed og produktvalg

Abstract

This thesis focuses on in-store visual tactics in grocery stores and the influence of these on consumers’ visual attention and decision-making. It is argued that traditional decision-making models are too complex to describe the choices that low-involved consumers make when shopping for daily commodities. These are more likely to be routine choices or affected by simple rules and justification techniques as well as visual aspects in the store. The objective of the thesis is to investigate how the visual attention towards and choice of private label products is influenced by the following two factors: 1) whether the private label is placed close to or further apart from a similar branded product of the same category and 2) by using a private label signage to increase visibility of the private label product in comparison to not using one. These problems are investigated by a triangulation method, which means that two different research methods are used for collecting data, the first of which is an eye-track study. This study takes place in laboratory settings and has the advantage of making it possible to record information of eye-movements. As the information is recorded during a constructed choice situation, the study gives insights on how the tested tactics influence visual attention and consumer choice. The second method is a range of experiments in grocery stores. These have the advantage of making it possible to investigate the influence of visual in-store tactics on consumer choice in real settings by studying sales. The analyses showed that close placement of a private labels and a branded product resulted in increased visual attention and sales numbers for both products. This indicates that the placement tactic was able to increase visibility of the two products in general. The signage tactic demonstrated ability to increase visual attention and sales numbers of the private label, but generally caused a cannibalisation effect, where the increase in the sale of private label occurred on the expense of lower sales of the branded product. All in all, the analyses indicated that visual attention is closely related to consumer choice. However, the conclusions are mainly based on general tendencies found in the data material as the results only showed few cases of strong relationships between variables with statistical significance. The implications of the results for retail managers are that close placement of a private label and a branded product within a category can be an advantage if the objective is to increase the visual attention and total sale in a category. If the objective is to increase visual attention and sale of a specific product, like the private label alternative, then the use of signage is advisable only if the increased risk of cannibalisation is taken into account.