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Exploring the underlying motivations for how consumers respond to retail product displays

A growing body of research has examined how different shelving-related cues, such as the position or arrangement of products on a shelf, influence consumers’ attention, inferences, and even brand choice. However, recent research by ESADE professor Ana Valenzuela has found that the relationship between consumer responses and retail product displays is more complex and depends not only on cognitive aspects but also consumers’ motivational states.

In the recent paper The cake looks yummy on the shelf up there: The interactive effect of retail shelf position and consumers’ personal sense of power on indulgent choice, published in the Journal of Retailing, Prof. Valenzuela and her colleagues further explore how shelf displays affect consumer behavior. Through a series of experiments, they demonstrate that consumers’ directed head movements (up/down) to locate a product on the shelf interact with their innate personal sense of power to influence their likelihood of making an indulgent choice.