Online Product Displays Affect Consumer's Shopping Behaviour, Says New Study

 

Product displays affect shopping behaviour as per a recent study published. People's choices can be influenced by store displays.
Product displays and product mismatch affects shopping behaviour as per study 

Curated product recommendations during online shopping can influence whether people buy a product they were considering. This has been shown by a new University of California San Diego research. The research findings were published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Neuroscience’. Uma R. Karmarkar, assistant professor at UC San Diego's Rady School of Management and School of Global Policy and Strategy, discovered that displaying items from the same category as the target product, such as a board game paired with other board games, increases the likelihood of a target product being purchased.

 

Consumers, on the other hand, are less likely to buy the target product if it is exhibited alongside products from different categories, such as board games and kitchen knives. Eye-tracking was used in the investigation. This is a type of sensor that allows you to see where someone is looking. The purpose of this study is to see how different types of displays affected visual attention. When paired with identical goods or things from different categories, participants in the study viewed their target product for the same amount of time. Even though the mismatched objects were merely supposed to be there "for display," buyers seemed to spend more time gazing at them.

Karmarkar, who holds a Ph.D. in consumer behaviour and neuroscience, said the findings show that having similar options on the website supports the impression to customers that they're making the proper kind of decision to buy an item that fits the category on display. The participants in the study ranged in age from 18 to 40 and had to make 36 online buying decisions for actual things using real money. The findings, which demonstrate variations in purchase rates, are similar to those of a series of research released by Karmarkar in 2017. She was able to measure which areas of the display were attracting more or less attention in the current study.

 

Furthermore, the future article demonstrates that matched displays boost purchase rates even when they incorporate more attention-getting information, such as price details. Karmarkar spoke with specialists in the field on product recommendation systems, which influenced her approach to these issues. Recommender algorithms can be designed in a variety of ways to satisfy the needs of various shops.

When businesses use cross-promotion methods based on historical consumer behaviour or inventory they wish to sell more quickly, products might be shown with "mismatched" displays. When a shopper is looking for something specific, regardless of recommender displays, they are more likely to focus their attention, but when people are just 'browsing goods online,' different page designs might induce distinct patterns of attention. People's choices can be influenced by store displays, even if they don't modify their preferences.