When the purchase of chocolate candies and other grocery items is not part of a regular shopping list, it tends to be a spontaneous act. So marketers of such food need to understand the mechanisms that lead to impulsive purchasing.A study reported by Jesper Clement of Copenhagen Business School in Denmark shows that purchasing can be affected by five in-store stages. Here are the findings and conclusions of this eye-track experiment on consumer purchasing behaviour.
Consumer Purchasing Patterns
The new millennium marks many revolutions in marketing that didn't exist in the previous century. One noticeable pattern has been marketers now place a greater emphasis on the purchase experience, as opposed to the consumers' desire to acquire certain products. People often make in-store purchasing decisions based on visual stimuli and examining the packaging. This concept contrasts with an earlier marketing theory, which was less focused on visual aspects of packaging design.
Historically, there have been two prevailing marketing theories related to packaging the past century. William James in 1890 suggested that visual attention relied on imagination or thoughts. This theory implies that special packaging is most effective at drawing attention if it already is associated with the consumer's needs. Visual attention, as theorized by Helmholtz in 1925, is a state in which people use their field of vision to focus on where they can find new items that may be appealing to them.
Yet information on visual stimuli is rare in marketing guides. In order to understand how in-store consumer behaviour has shifted in the 21st century, it's important for manufacturers and marketers to conduct more studies on consumer buying patterns. Visual stimuli is a field of study that needs deeper exploration since it could be a goldmine of new marketing strategies. The fact that increasing visual stimuli, which is called the self-organising criticality system, can affect purchasing patterns, suggests it should play a huge role in designing marketing strategies.
Five Phases of Purchasing Behaviour
- build up / pre-attention phase: consumer interest develops over time
- critical phase: the pattern shifts to new activity
- re-organising phase: a tipping point or trigger leads to a new behaviour
- focal activity phase: focus is dominated by one issue
- dormancy phase: activity begins to decrease
How Gaze Time Impacts Purchasing
The eye-tracking experiment used adult male and female consumers in large supermarkets. The results showed that the amount of time people spent gazing at a product affected their purchasing decisions. Gaze time can be measured counting the number of frames in which the eye is fixated on an object in a video. In many cases, gaze time starts out for short periods in early purchasing phases, then is extended during the time people hold the package, followed by a decrease in fixation in the post-purchase phase.
In the early phases gaze time doesn't differ much between purchased items and non-purchased items, even when the consumer brings a structured shopping list. Visual distractions that interrupt an in-store product search effort and random thoughts can steer consumers in unpredictable directions until they reach a tipping point. The in-store jam and pasta eye-tracking study revealed that 69% of buyers looked back on the shelf at the exact same item they had already put in their shopping basket.
Immediately before making physical contact with the package, the individual engages in visual search activity influenced by a visual cue. These decisions tend to not be affected by time pressure. Just because someone brings a shopping list with them does not correlate with less attention on other items. It's still possible for them to be affected by visual cues that lead to sales conversions. The jam/pasta experiment found that the tipping point affected a shift from a subconscious to conscious decision-making state of mind.
Visual Stimuli Factors
People do not recall visual information for long periods, according to various researchers such as Verghese and Pelli or Simons and Chabris. Another finding from these studies has been that people tend to overlook certain objects due to their visual attention having limited capacity. With this knowledge in mind, think of how shapes and sizes can stand out from competing products in a store.
A product may gain an edge by being in a bigger package than competitors, although this strategy goes against the eco-friendly direction that many businesses and consumers are moving toward. Finding the proper balance has always been important in marketing. Another way a product may stand out is its shape. If all other competitors use square or rectangle boxes, a package with rounded edges may stand out visually. Other factors that affect visual attention include:
- attractive colours
- orientation and contrast
- easy to understand objects
- brand preferences
Conclusion
From the time customers enter a store to the time they make a purchase they go through a series of phases that shape their decision process. Visual impact of packaging design plays a huge role throughout this process, culminating in a tipping point. Increasing visual stimuli, known as the self-organising criticality system, during these phases is a significant factor for influencing purchasing behaviour. The more a product stands out from other products, the better chance it can capture the consumer's attention.
