The Influence of Assortment Structure on Perceived Variety and Consumption Quantities

By Barbara E. Kahn, Brian Wansink. 2004

629 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Increasing the actual variety of an assortment has been shown previously to increase the quantity consumed. We show, however, that consumption quantities are also influenced by the perceived variety of an assortment. In combination, six lab and field studies show that the structure of an assortment (e.g., organization and symmetry or entropy) moderates the effect of actual variety on perceived variety. We further show that it is perceived variety that in turn influences consumption quantities through anticipated consumption utility. Making salient other consumption rules, such as size of the assortment, moderates this effect. These findings are of immediate relevance to interdisciplinary researchers and to consumers and health practitioners who wish to better control food consumption.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Food Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/278caca3031eefedad1c64505f80ddbd7add352d

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Citations in the corpus

A Review and Taxonomy of Choice Architecture Techniques (2016, background): “…can thus tactically arrange the respective categories or allocation alternatives, such as segregating healthy options into more diverse categories (Kahn & Wansink, 2004), partitioning safety and style attributes of a car differently (Martin & Norton, 2009), or presenting more finegrained,…”
Pleasure principles: A review of research on hedonic consumption (2013, background): “Further, consumers prefer assortments in which variety is view of research on hedonic consumption, Journal of Consumer Psychology easier to perceive (Kahn & Wansink, 2004).”
The Completeness Heuristic: Product Shape Completeness Influences Size Perceptions, Preference, and Consumption (2014, background): “The common explanation for these findings is that both perceptions and consumption decisions are influenced by faulty heuristic processing or consumption norms (e.g., Kahn and Wansink 2004) that can serve as a useful guide in some contexts but can distort decision making in others.”
Where are the best opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the food system (including the food chain) (2011, background): “Greater choice can lead to overpurchasing (Kahn and Wansink, 2004), which in turn generates waste.”
Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload (2010, methodology): “Given the data coding used, the meta-regression showed that “more choice is better” for those experiments that use consumption quantity as a dependent measure, an effect that was driven by the data from Kahn and Wansink (2004).”
What Moderates the Too-Much-Choice Effect? (2009, background): “Kahn and Wansink (2004) found that it is the perception of variety rather than the mere number of options that ultimately determines consumption quantity.”
Perceptions of assortment variety: The effects of congruency between consumers’ internal and retailers’ external organization (2005, background): “This work also contributes to the perceived variety literature (e.g., Broniarczyk, Hoyer and McAlister 1998, Hoch, Bradlow and Wansink 1999, Kahn and Wansink 2004) that suggests consumer perceptions of variety are dependent on more than just the actual number of individual items in the assortment.”
Environmental factors that increase the food intake and consumption volume of unknowing consumers. (2004, background): “Recently, Kahn & Wansink have shown that simply increasing the perceived variety of an assortment can increase consumption (52).”
What is Quality? An Integrative Framework of Processes and States (2012, background): “Ambiguous attributes (e.g., aesthetics of an airline lounge) are measured through human senses (Kahn and Wansink 2004).”
Choice overload: A conceptual review and meta-analysis (2015, background): “In the same vein, consumers might approach the available assortments with the affective goal of deriving pleasure from the evaluation process itself (Kahn & Ratner, 2005; Kahn & Wansink, 2004).”