Sorting the Assortment: An Experimental Study of How the Sorting of Products Affects Consumers' Behavior and Experience in Online Grocery Stores

Abstract: Online grocery shopping is becoming increasingly popular and more information is needed in the field to help guide retailers in marketing and visual merchandising online. This study examines how findings from prior research in physical stores apply in the new digital format. An experimental study is used to investigate how manipulation of product sorting in an online grocery store affects the consumers' shopping experience. A mock-up online grocery store is created to gather data about participants' behaviors and perceptions. Data is collected in two ways; from observations of consumers' behavior when participating in the constructed experiment, and from a self-completion questionnaire. The results show that the sorting of products affects the consumers' behavior and perceptions when shopping for groceries online. Consumers are found to perceive a product assortment sorted by popularity to be more attractive and offer higher choice convenience, than if the same assortment is randomly sorted. It is further found that sorting a product assortment by popularity results in higher overall satisfaction and revisit intention among the consumers, compared to a randomly sorted assortment.