Consumers like to know they have options when shopping. Even when making a purchase in a different category, consumers often browse through stores just to see what other products are currently available. Depending on how products are displayed, consumers may or may not perceive the full range of options offered in the store. Since consumers are more likely to choose stores that offer more variety in their assortments, it is clearly advantageous for retailers to design their stores in a way that leads to higher perceptions of variety.

In this article, we show that consumers’ perceptions of variety and satisfaction with an assortment are dependent upon how a product category is organized, both internally by the consumer and externally by the retailer. For internal consumer organization, we look at consumers’ mental schemas of a product category as well as shopping goals that may change from one shopping trip to another. For external retailer organization, we look at both the organization of displays inside a store and filtering mechanisms that retailers may use to limit the number of options that consumers see on a shopping trip. 

For familiar product categories, we find if there is a match between the way consumers categorize products in their heads and the way stores organize their product displays, consumers can process the items more easily and perceive more variety. However, if consumers are not familiar with the product category, we find that shopping goals play a bigger role in determining perceptions of variety. Specifically, if the shopping goal is consistent with the organization of product displays in the store, consumers view less variety since they can find a product that meets their goal more quickly, but they are more satisfied with the overall assortment offering. In this way, shopping goals serve as self-imposed filters on the assortment that allow easier navigation through the multitude of products and increase satisfaction. A different effect, however, results when a filter is externally imposed by the retailer. Rather than increasing satisfaction, when retailers institute external category filters that match consumers’ internal shopping goals, consumers have lower satisfaction with the assortment and lower perceptions of variety because they can go directly to what they want to purchase without even seeing any other options. 

Together these results all suggest the importance of internal and external organization on how consumers view product assortments. Consistent with prior work, this emphasizes that consumer perceptions of variety are dependent on more than just the actual number of individual items in an assortment. For consumers to perceive a retailer as offering a lot of options, it is not enough for a store to stock a large number of products on their shelves. Rather, it is necessary to look at how the products are displayed on store shelves and whether the organization of in-store displays matches the way consumers organize the product category in their heads.

In addition, it is also important for retailers to understand how familiar consumers are with the product categories they carry. When product categories are familiar, it is especially important for retailers to match their store displays with consumers’ mental schema for the category, as a match leads to higher perceptions of variety and satisfaction and a mismatch leads to the exact opposite. On the other hand, when product categories are unfamiliar, a match between internal and external organization has no effect and shopping goals become more important in determining variety perceptions and satisfaction. For this reason, it may be useful for retailers carrying unfamiliar product categories to provide in-store or on-site display cues to suggest shopping goals to their customers. These should not only help consumers to perceive more variety in the assortment, but may also increase the likelihood of purchase as well.

Finally, retailers should consider the tradeoffs of having filtering mechanisms in their stores or on their web sites that allow consumers to bypass large parts of their product assortments.  While they may decrease confusion for a particular shopping trip, they can also result in consumers perceiving less variety and being less satisfied with the offering in their store.  At the very least, retailers should offer ample incentives for consumers to “pop-out” of their directed path to allow people to appreciate the full range of options available and increase their likelihood of returning for another shopping trip.