Retail Choice Architecture: The Effects of Benefit- and Attribute-Based Assortment Organization on Consumer Perceptions and Choice

Cait Poynor Lamberton and Kristin Diehl

Journal of Consumer Research, 2013, vol. 40, issue 3, 393 - 411

Abstract: This article explores the effects of two distinct retail choice architectures--those that organize assortments by attributes and those that organize items by benefits. Relative to attribute-based organizations, benefit-based organizations lead to more abstract construal and heighten similarity perceptions among items in an assortment. Such changes in similarity perceptions alter consumers' strength of preference among items: when choosing from benefit- as opposed to attribute-based organizations, consumers select lower-priced items and are more similarly satisfied with their top choice as with a lower-ranked option. Further, consumers' internal shopping objectives and orientations cued by the external organization may interact in ways that heighten similarity perceptions. Results suggest that abstract construal cues, regardless of whether they arise internally or externally, may dominate concrete cues in the type of shopping context under consideration.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671103 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/671103 (text/html)

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:oup:jconrs:doi:10.1086/671103

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().