Managing consumers’ visual attention in the context of information asymmetry

Abstract

The problem of imperfect information is one of the central focuses of institutional economics. Information asymmetry creates a contextual environment for marketing promotion. Its manifestations are associated with both the inability for the buyer to know the true price of the product and the risk of making the wrong choice. The paper deals with the assessment of information asymmetry that occurs in retail trade, as well as the development of algorithms for identifying areas of visual consumer interest that are responsible for consumer decision-making. The methodological framework of the research is based on experimental economics, including the methods of classical marketing and neuromarketing. The information base of the study embraces the research works of Russian and foreign scholars published in the leading peer-reviewed journals, as well as the authors’ previous studies, designed algorithms and methods for analyzing marketing and neuromarketing data. Empirical and experimental results show that when making a choice and a purchase decision, the buyer is guided by different types of information attributes that create information asymmetry. We put forward and statistically confirm five hypotheses concerning the optimization of consumer visual attention management, such as: there are differences in eye movement behavior of men and women when choosing goods; there is a correlation between time spent in a store and the number of impulse purchases made; the design of supermarket shelves increases the amount of visual attention; there is a relationship between the visual hierarchy of products and consumer choice; and information asymmetry of product display proves the redundancy of unstructured visual information. The research results are useful for retail businesses and are of high importance in terms of the fundamental understanding of the space organization in stores, as this allows getting new evidence about the possibilities of consumer visual attention management.