Product Search on Crowded Retail Shelves: Impact of Vertical Product Location on Search Performance

In the context of FMCGs, consumers often arrive at the store with a choice of a product in mind. Their task then is to find their already chosen product among the products present at the point of purchase. In the current paper, we focus on this task of visual search for a target product on a shelf with a large assortment (i.e., a crowded shelf). Specifically, we investigate the influence of vertical location (VL) of a product on a crowded shelf on consumers’ search performance. We provide initial evidence that, when the task is to find a target product on a shelf, the middle shelf (MS) is a position of disadvantage, when compared to the top shelf (TS) and the bottom shelf (BS). Finding a target product on a crowded shelf is not easy. As the number of objects in any scene increases, it becomes difficult to distinguish the objects in that scene from one another. This is known as the “crowding effect” (Levi 2008; Whitney and Levi 2010). Among the factors influencing the strength of the crowding effect, is the location in the scene and the visual field. We investigate the influence of product location on search performance. In a product choice context, products on MS and TS have been shown to get more attention and positive evaluation (Chandon et al. 2009; Valenzuela and Raghubir 2009; Atalay et al. 2012). The impact of product location on search, however, is underexplored. According to the crowding literature, the ability of identifying an object in a crowded scene depends on that object’s location by way of two mechanisms: anisotropy and asymmetry (Levi 2008; Whitney and Levi 2010). Anisotropy suggests that the crowding effect differs along the vertical axis of the visual field, and, specifically, is less strong in the lower visual field (He et al. 1996). Hence, the ability to identify an object’s features is improved when the object is located in the lower visual field. Asymmetry refers to the role of surrounding (flanker) objects: a target object is more difficult to identify when it is presented with two flankers, positioned one on each side of the target, than when it is presented with only one flanker on one side (Bouma 1970; Bouma 1973). Thus, in a display of objects, the objects on the outer sides of the display will be easier to identify than the inner objects.