In today’s retail environment, consumer products are increasingly competing for customers’ attention. Research has shown that 60–80% of purchasing decisions are influenced in-store. Thus, packaging that stands out from competitors gains a competitive advantage. This study investigates the use of eye-tracking as a method to evaluate and design packaging with better Point-of-Purchase qualities. An eye-tracking laboratory was used and shoppers were recruited for three rounds of experiments. In total, 128 participants were recruited in order to assess the potential of eye-tracking. Results show that, when taking some methodological constraints into account, eye-tracking complements traditional methodologies with further insights when investigating the Point-of-Purchase qualities of packaging.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the positioning of textual and pictorial design elements on a package affects visual attention (detection time) toward these element types. The study has a 3 × 2 (Stimulus × Location) between-subjects design. One pictorial and two textual package elements, located on the top right- or top left-hand side of a package, were used as stimuli. Visual attention was measured by eye-tracking. A total of 199 university students participated. The data were analysed using a two-way ANOVA and a Pearson’s chi-square analysis with standardised residuals. The results show that in order to receive the most direct attention, textual elements should be on the left-hand side of a package, whereas pictorial elements should be on the right-hand side. This is inconsistent with previous design directions (based on recall), suggesting the opposite element organisation. Previous research has focused on recall (whether respondents remember having seen package elements) or preference (whether respondents prefer a package based on element positioning). The focus of the present study was whether respondents actually saw the different elements on a package, and how long it took them to detect such elements. Detection time for certain element types can be viewed as a new and complementary way of evaluating the position of package elements. The paper also addresses whether preference is a result of easy information acquisition.

Many factors influence the consumer’s attention at point-of-purchase (POP), and suppliers invest heavily in these factors to influence behaviour and to increase the likelihood their products’ will ultimately be chosen. This paper contributes to the research on decision-making at POP by exploring shelf verticality (vertical space position) and product packaging as factors influencing consumer attention, consideration, and choice. We explored the inferences consumers drew from shelf verticality and product packaging by measuring visual perception in the decision-making process. In two eye-tracking experiments with value specific tasks (premium or budget), we found that consumers made inferences based on shelf verticality, which in turn influenced the initial visual attention towards products on the shelf. Nevertheless, consumers ultimately made value inferences from product packaging in consideration and choice of products. The implication is that consumers anticipate premium products to be placed on the top shelf level and budget products on the bottom. Any deviation from this expectation leads to longer search time. The main contribution of this research is that consumers use shelf verticality to reduce the search effort, similar to a heuristic, when product search is initiated. Consequently, the optimal placement of a product should be based on consumers’ expectations.

In complex decision-making situations consumers employ a variety of heuristics to simplify their decisions. One such strategy is the recognition heuristic, which is employed in the initial stage of decision-making to construct a consideration set for further evaluation. The result of this process is that recognised products continue further into the decision-making process, hence receiving more visual attention. This paper focuses on the influence this increased visual attention has on preference construction compared with the preference formation from recognition of products. In an eye-tracking experiment, this study showed that preferences were constructed on the fly as an effect of increased visual attention. However, product recognition moderated the influence of visual attention on preference construction. The results showed that product recognition increased the effect of visual attention on preference formation. Consequently, recognition resulted in increased attention and increased attention resulted in construction of preference.

The purpose of the present study is to test Russo and Leclerc’s (1994) three-stage model and evaluate the influence that product familiarity and decision task have on the three stages of consumer choice process. Previous researchers have suggested that consumer choice is performed in a structured manner in a multiple-stage process. These stages are understood as sub-processes of a consumer choice process and consist of iterations of elimination and consideration within the consumer choice process. Russo and Leclerc (1994) identified three such stages – (1) orientation, (2) evaluation, and (3) verification – by studying variations of visual attention in the consumer choice for fast-moving consumer goods. We conducted three eye-tracking experiments with results that generally confirmed the staged consumer choice model suggested by Russo and Leclerc (1994). However, we identified differences in how the mean observation time varies over the three stages of the process. In contrast to the findings of Russo and Leclerc (1994), our results show that product familiarity influences the evaluation and verification stage of the consumer choice process as familiar products are attended longer then unfamiliar. The results show that the influence of product familiarity depends on the decision task, as familiarity has an influence on the consumer choice process when preference choice task is given, but not when a specific quality choice task is given to consumers. Additionally, the results of the experiments are interpreted in terms of heuristics to shed further light on the underlying cognitive processes of the consumer stage model. The results show that the influence of decision task and product familiarity is an effect of different decision heuristics employed during the choice process.