Luxury goods in online retail: How high/low positioning influences consumer processing fluency and preference

Abstract

Consumers describe luxury goods as “high-status” goods that are associated with the “upper class.” If these spatial metaphors are valid, then consumers should prefer luxury goods being positioned higher in the visual field in a consumer setting, which would be because of the psychological theory known as “processing fluency.” Fluency occurs when there is a congruence between two concepts, facilitating ease of processing and thereby liking. We test the effect of high (vs. low) spatial positioning for luxury goods in an online retailing context. Across three experiments, we observe that placing luxury goods higher on a website “matches” consumers’ lay associations about such items, with the positive feelings thereby transferring onto the luxury good. The findings demonstrate that locating luxury products at different heights in the visual field can influence product preference. In doing so, we build on existing theory concerning visual perception, spatial metaphors, and processing fluency.