Six Lessons for In-Store Marketing from Six Years of Mobile Eye-Tracking Research

Abstract

Manufacturers and retailers spend millions of dollars every year on in-store communications. The effectiveness of these dollars depends on whether shoppers notice, pay attention to, and engage with these communications, something that is best determined from eye-tracking data. In this chapter, we utilize mobile eye-tracking data from tens of in-store marketing research studies conducted with hundreds of shoppers to develop six lessons with important implications for effective signage, shelf configuration, and package design. The first three lessons highlight the challenge of being noticed and engaged with in the store, given the narrow spatial window above and below eye level in which consumers look, the very short amount of time they devote to reading a sign or label even when they notice it, and the low probability that they engage with a communication especially if it is not immediately actionable. The last three lessons provide guidance on how marketers can design packages and labels that are more likely to be noticed, read, and included in the shopper’s consideration set, across different product categories.

Citation

Hendrickson, K. and Ailawadi, K.L. (2014), "Six Lessons for In-Store Marketing from Six Years of Mobile Eye-Tracking Research", Shopper Marketing and the Role of In-Store Marketing (Review of Marketing Research, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 57-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1548-643520140000011002