Abstract
Eye tracking studies have analyzed the relationship between visual attention to point of purchase marketing elements (price, signage, etc.) and purchase intention. Our study is the first to investigate the relationship between the gaze sequence in which consumers view a display (including gaze aversion away from products) and the influence of consumer (top down) characteristics on product choice. We conducted an in-lab 3 (display size: large, moderate, small) X 2 (price: sale, non-sale) within-subject experiment with 92 persons. After viewing the displays, subjects completed an online survey to provide demographic data, self-reported and actual product knowledge, and past purchase information. We employed a random forest machine learning approach via R software to analyze all possible three-unit subsequences of gaze fixations. Models comparing multiclass F1-macro score and F1-micro score of product choice were analyzed. Gaze sequence models that included gaze aversion more accurately predicted product choice in a lab setting for more complex displays. Inclusion of consumer characteristics generally improved model predictive F1-macro and F1-micro scores for less complex displays with fewer plant sizes Consumer attributes that helped improve model prediction performance were product expertise, ethnicity, and previous plant purchases.
Highlights
Most consumer product choices (>90%) are made at the point of purchase (POP) [1]
We evaluated the predictive performance of the eight final Random forests (RF) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers
Our first research question centered on whether features contained within gaze sequences are predictive of product choice
Summary
Most consumer product choices (>90%) are made at the point of purchase (POP) [1]. Retailers have a variety of tools (signs, labels, display fixtures, merchandise arrangement, etc.) for organizing the store environment to capture consumer attention and motivate consumer choice. Consumer packaged goods companies invested approximately $29.7 billion in shopper marketing in 2016, accounting for more than 13% of their marketing budget [2]. Marketing organizations perceive this investment to be effective, as indicated by 73% of surveyed executives who rated in-store marketing as very or quite useful [3], making the retail space a critical location for purchase decisions.
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