Optimal Feature Advertising Design Under Competitive Clutter

Rik Pieters (), Michel Wedel () and Jie Zhang ()
Additional contact information
Rik Pieters: Department of Marketing, Tilburg University, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands
Michel Wedel: Department of Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
Jie Zhang: Department of Marketing, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742

Management Science, 2007, vol. 53, issue 11, 1815-1828

Abstract: This study investigates consumers' attention to retail feature ads and proposes a method to optimize the design of the ads. Utilizing a large dataset of consumers' attention to over 1,100 individual feature ads collected with eye-tracking technology, we analyze the effects of the five key design elements of feature ads--brand, text, pictorial, price, and promotion--on consumers' attention to them. Attention is measured in terms of selection and gaze duration. We focus on the effects of the surface sizes of the design elements. A key feature of our model is that it takes into account the impact of visual clutter in the ad display page. To capture the clutter effects, we propose two new entropy-based measures that characterize the salience of feature ads in their competitive environment based on Attention Engagement Theory. In a Bayesian framework, we simultaneously estimate the parameters of the model and optimize the design of feature ads in terms of surface sizes of the five design elements. Our optimization results and comparisons with alternative design approaches indicate that significant improvements in attention to feature advertising can be achieved without increase in costs, and that the resultant optimal feature ad designs create win-win opportunities for manufacturers and retailers.

Keywords: retailing; promotions; visual attention; hierarchical Bayes; eye-tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1070.0732 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:53:y:2007:i:11:p:1815-1828

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().