How Product Display Orientation Affects Customers’ Choice Satisfaction in Online Purchase: A Choice Closure Perspective

Yanli Jia (), Yulin Fang () and Jun Ouyang ()
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Yanli Jia: School of Management, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China
Yulin Fang: Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, Hong Kong
Jun Ouyang: Business School, Minnan Normal University, Zhangzhou 363000, China

Information Systems Research, 2025, vol. 36, issue 3, 1587-1611

Abstract: Online retailers often confront the problem of order cancellation due to customers’ poor satisfaction with their online purchase decision, termed as choice satisfaction in this study. However, very little e-commerce literature has addressed customer choice satisfaction, and none, to our knowledge, has investigated how to design product display interfaces to achieve it. Drawing from choice closure theory and eye and vision research, we examine how product display orientation of an online shopping web page affects customers’ choice satisfaction upon purchase. We propose that a horizontal (versus vertical) display of comparable products on an e-commerce website is more positively related to customer choice satisfaction by promoting a higher level of choice closure (a psychological process by which online customers come to perceive a decision as completed and settled). Through five carefully designed experiments (including one using an eye-tracking device), we find that online customers achieve a higher level of choice satisfaction from an assortment of comparable products displayed horizontally than vertically on e-commerce websites. This effect results from the fact that a horizontal product display increases the amount of comparisons customers make between product options prior to making a purchase decision and consequential sense of choice closure after the decision. We also find that a cue of finality (e.g., adding a textual note “The end” to the product display) can largely attenuate this effect. The implications for online retailers’ product showcase strategies are discussed, along with future research directions.

Keywords: e-commerce; web interface design; product display orientation; choice satisfaction; choice closure; eye tracking; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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