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This paper aims to apply intuition theory to clarify consumers’ assortment evaluations. For each decision process, this paper explores how perceptions of organization and variety influence consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions.

In total, 504 observations were collected across three product categories. Perceived choice, time and expertise in the product category provide proxies to distinguish between intuitive and deliberative systems. The intuitive system further consists of intuition based on either expertise or heuristics.

It was revealed that distinct decision processes (deliberative, intuitive based on expertise and intuitive based on heuristics) affect the link between assortment perceptions and consumers’ assortment evaluations. Consumers’ evaluations in deliberative- and heuristic-based intuitive systems rely more on perceptions of organization than of variety; whereas intuitive judgments based on expertise depend almost equally on both perceptions.

Some limitations have to be underlined. The approximations used could be more precise and are subjective in nature. Moreover, the ordinary product categories that were studied might encourage more intuitive decisions by consumers. If so, the deliberative mode of thinking might have been underrepresented in this sample.

Despite the limitations, this research is, to our knowledge, the first to explore the influence of intuition theory on ordinary shopping and in particular on assortment perception. As such, it contributes to a deeper understanding of this theory in the field.

This research shows that to reach their prime goal of building an efficient assortment, retailers need, beside increasing the outlet’s cost‐efficiency, to evaluate shoppers’ assortment perceptions so that what the store actually offers can be tailored to meet customers’ needs and expectations. Our findings reveal that consumers’ perceptions of the assortment range stems from the combination of few indicators, mainly the number of stock‐keeping units proposed and the availability of the favorite brands. Also demonstrates that consumers evaluation of the overall store assortment draws on the perceived choice within the product categories where they are highly sensitive to the assortment range.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ variety perception for online grocery assortments and, more generally, to better understand consumers’ attitude toward digital assortments. In particular, this research examines the influence of the organization of products that results from assortment structure and display.

Starting from the observation that previous work on traditional assortments is not sufficient to understand consumers’ perceptions and attitudes, the paper adopts a hypothetico-deductive approach and develops four hypotheses. These hypotheses are tested using an experimental approach.

This research enables us to see that both attitude and variety perception are affected by the way products are organized on a website. Furthermore, contrary to what the literature on traditional assortments allows one to assume, the assortment corresponding to a more positive attitude is not perceived as being the more varied. As a result, our findings reconsider the link between variety perception and consumer assortment evaluation for digital assortments.

The work is based on data collected for only one product category. It would be interesting to explore other categories also, to determine if the structure of the assortment and variety perception have stable effects.

The results inform retailers that they must carefully design the display of their digital assortments. If a retailer wants to enhance variety perception, the authors recommend using an assortment organized by brand, or presenting all the products together. If, instead, the goal is to encourage a positive attitude, the retailer should opt for assortments sorted by attribute or that present all products together.

This research adopts a new orientation on assortment perception and evaluation, considering the specificities involved in digitizing assortments. In addition, this research studies a real product category and puts respondents in experimental conditions close to reality.

The aim of this paper is to seek to understand better how consumers judge multiattribute products that are perceived as either more or less complete in terms of feature coverage in a category. Complete products are used to reduce the need of developing and managing expansive and expensive line‐extension portfolios.

The research used an experimental method and conducted two studies to test hypotheses derived from the marketing literature.

It is found that more complete multiattribute products are preferred to less complete alternatives. This preference for more complete products remains under larger competitive product assortment, but is reduced under smaller assortment. With a higher price level and larger assortment, the preference is substantial. However, under the conditions of lower price level/larger assortment, higher price level/smaller assortment, and lower price level/smaller assortment, the preference is again reduced.

More positive evaluations and higher product utility accrue from adding new features to multiattribute products prior to purchase. Moreover, more complete information causes more positive evaluations and cognitive responses. Larger assortment strains cognitive resources, and more complete multiattribute products are easier to understand than less complete multiattribute products. This processing facilitation generates positive affect leads to greater use of information that can shorten processing.

Brand managers can have a better understanding of how consumers judge more and less complete products, and under which circumstances more complete products are preferred.

The study of perceived product completeness is novel.

The aim of this study is to better understand how consumers understand and judge multi‐attribute products that are perceived as either more or less complete in terms of feature coverage in a category. Complete products are used to reduce the need of developing and managing expansive and expensive line‐extension portfolios.

The authors used an experimental method and conducted two studies to test hypotheses derived from the marketing literature.

The authors find more complete multi‐attribute products are preferred to less complete alternatives. This preference for more complete products remains under larger competitive product assortment, but is reduced under smaller assortment. With a higher price level and larger assortment, the preference is substantial. However, under the conditions of lower price level/larger assortment, higher price level/smaller assortment, and lower price level/smaller assortment, the preference is again reduced.

More positive evaluations and higher product utility accrue from adding new features to multi‐attribute products prior to purchase. Moreover, more complete information causes more positive evaluations and cognitive responses. Larger assortment strains cognitive resources, and more complete multi‐attribute products are easier to understand than less complete multi‐attribute products. This processing facilitation generates positive affect and leads to greater use of information that can shorten processing. Price level strongly influences processing of more complete products under larger assortment, but not under smaller assortment.

Brand managers have a better understanding of how consumers judge more and less complete products, and under which circumstances more complete products are preferred.

The study of perceived product completeness is novel.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze consumers’ reaction to assortment composition.

This study examines several scenarios: private label (PL)-only assortments; mixed assortments (PL and national brands (NBs)), and in the latter case both small and large assortments. Consumers’ reaction is measured through three dependent variables: store image, PL purchase intention and store-switching intentions. The authors ran a structural equation model (SEM) to analyze the influence of different explanatory aspects (product category involvement, attitude toward PL, value consciousness and assortment variety perception) on consumers’ reactions for each scenario. For this research, the authors carried out an online experiment with a sample of 1,400 individuals from a large panel of consumers.

Consumers react differently to different assortment compositions, giving importance to the differences between the three assortment models analyzed. The results show that the composition of the assortment, either according to its size or its structure, influences consumers’ response in a significant way. The results demonstrate that store image exclusively affects PL purchase intention in PL-only assortments. Only in mixed assortments is there a relationship between the assortment variety perception and store image, product category involvement and PL purchase intention, and both store image and value consciousness are related to store-switching intentions. Store-switching intentions decrease when consumers intend to purchase PL, but strictly in PL-only and large mixed assortments. Finally, value consciousness and variety perception are positively related to PL purchase intentions only in large mixed assortments.

One limitation of this research is that it is restricted to the Spanish context. Second, the methodology is based on an online experiment, with the advantages and disadvantages that this entails. Third, the authors did not differentiate between high- and low-value PL which, if undertaken, could be of interest for observing how brand value affects the management of retail assortments. Finally, the authors did not differentiate regular buyers at these retail chains from those who are not.

The comparison between different assortment compositions helps the authors to draw some very interesting conclusions. The estimation of different consumers’ responses is ideal for providing retailers with recommendations on how to frame their assortment strategies. Thus, the main recommendation of this study for retailers is to look for a “balance” between PL and NBs, i.e., to offer mixed assortments.

Aside from mixed assortments, this study estimates the consequences of assortments that are exclusively PL. The authors proposed and deployed a SEM, so this paper contributes to the retailing field by including multiple dependent variables – store image, PL purchase intention and store-switching intentions. The authors conducted an online experiment containing “real” brands, which is another contribution as it enables consumers’ response to be estimated in a “real” environment.

The choice overload (CO) phenomenon, whereby having many options leads to negative consequences, has been studied widely in psychology and marketing. However, empirical evidence of CO in the tourism context is limited, even though people often encounter numerous choices (e.g., vacation destinations, airfares, hotels, tours) at different stages when planning their holidays. Investigating CO in tourism and hospitality is important because (online) travel advisors are providing tourists with numerous choices, yet they do not know whether or not these decision makers are content after choosing from these large choice sets. This chapter proposes to review and apply insights garnered from the CO literature to tourism research. Accordingly, the chapter proposes five groups of solutions for tourists and travel advisors to avoid CO effects: reducing decision task difficulty, reducing choice-set complexity, reducing preference uncertainty, focusing on decision goals rather than the means to achieve those goals, and adopting appropriate decision-making styles.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge together seemingly disparate yet interconnected paradigmatic antecedents of e-tailing and servicescape, i.e., product assortment, order fulfillment, shopping assistance and its consequences for shopping efficiency.

The proposed conceptual model is well grounded in the extensive literature from e-tailing as well as retailing domain and to assess the plausibility of the model. Total 246 female online apparel shoppers were surveyed from an Indian university and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling through SmartPLS.

The outcomes of the study indicate that the e-customer may derive a substantial share of shopping assistance and service interface through product assortment offered by e-tailing sites. Customer-perceived performance of this e-shopping process – a crucial element of e-tail servicescape – directly affects the shopping assistance, along with order fulfillment capability of retail scope.

The study used a sample of graduate students at a north-west university in India, which limits the generalizability of the research to other consumer groups. The paper links a significant body of literature within a conceptually developed framework and identifies key research areas in the e-tailing realm.

By better understanding the role of product assortment as a value-added feature in online value co-creation process, the e-tail managers can leverage the proposed integrated capability to improve e-tailing performance and customer outcomes in the form of business.

With rapid advancements in internet-led communication, we are witnessing the dawn of a new era of e-tail innovations around us which is expected to change the way people experience shopping.

This research is an attempt to enrich the level of understanding about online shopping environment in light of relationships among virtual and physical facets of e-tail, i.e., product assortment, order fulfillment, shopping assistance and shopping efficiency. The authors investigate customer-perceived product assortment performance in e-tailing and its significances on shopping outcomes.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of assortment size and attribute quantity on the depth and content of consumer information searches.

For a computer-aided experiment using an information display board, participants (n = 393) were placed in a simulated shopping situation that involved choosing a product among three sets of frequently purchased, low-involvement, FMCG alternatives.

The findings show that when the assortment size increases, consumers acquire information from more products and cues but sacrifice product attributes. In particular, this sacrifice comes at the expense of secondary product attributes (e.g. nutrition information, country of origin), whereas primary product attributes (e.g. brand name, price) remain constant. Attribute quantity does not have a significant effect on information search.

Provided that several strategies rely on providing more information to consumers with the aim of making more deliberate and better choices, the findings suggest that they may have a limited effect in product categories in which the assortment size is wide. The authors discuss the implications for category management and public policy.

Information searches are measured by means of three different variables (searched cues, searched products and searched attributes), which enable a more complex exploration of the consumer information search process.