All the cues we cannot see: How reward-driven distractors render consumers insensitive to assortment complexity

Sebastian Sadowski, Bob M. Fennis and Koert van Ittersum

Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 190, issue C

Abstract: Consumers face assortments in the retail environment that are more and more complex. This research extends the current literature on location-based choice behavior by demonstrating how varying assortment complexity impacts consumer choice behavior while shopping and how the presence or absence of reward-driven distractors (cues that promise a reward yet are unrelated to the choice task) modulate that choice process. We find that consumers tend to choose products closer to the center of an assortment when facing non-complex assortments. At the same time, they shift their choice towards the edge when selecting products from complex assortments. However, we only observe these effects in the absence of reward-driven distractors. When present, assortment complexity fails to steer consumers into diverging product locations. We discuss how our findings might inform retail practice.

Keywords: Reward-driven distractors; Assortment complexity; Attention; Motivation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:190:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325000505

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115227

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