An Empirical Analysis of the Joint Effects of Shoppers’ Goals and Attribute Display on Shoppers’ Evaluations

This article develops a decision-making framework that highlights how display of numeric attribute information (e.g., display of calorie information) and shoppers’ goals (i.e., having a diet focus vs. a taste focus) jointly influence shoppers’ choices and preferences. Across two sets of studies, including a field study involving the launch of a new Coca-Cola product, the authors show that when food items are displayed in an aligned manner (i.e., when food items with lower-value calorie information are displayed below food items with higher calorie values), shoppers assign more importance weight to calorie gap information. In turn, higher importance weight assigned to calorie gap information leads diet-focused shoppers to relatively prefer low-calorie food items but leads taste-focused shoppers to relatively prefer higher-calorie food items. The third set of studies shows that this decision-making framework has widespread applicability and is relevant in any domain in which advertising, retail, and online displays show comparisons of numeric attribute information.