Many retailers juxtapose complementary items so that they are seen by shoppers as an ensemble. For example, apparel retailers juxtapose complementary items (such as shirts and pants) on mannequins and free-standing fixtures so that the items appear to be complete outfits. In addition to juxtaposition, retailers devote special attention to the coordination of complementary items sold at their stores to ensure that they are matched or consistent on certain key attributes, such as color, style, and design. This paper examines how merchandise coordination and juxtaposition affect consumers’ evaluation of and intention to purchase individual products to provide answers to some key retail management concerns: Does juxtaposing products in a well-coordinated manner improve product evaluation and increase purchase intention? Does coordinating complementary products on key attributes have any effect on product evaluation or purchase intention if the products are displayed separately rather than juxtaposed?

A conceptual framework based on aesthetics, consumer information processing, and memory literature is proposed. The framework explains the effects of coordination on a consumer’s evaluation of and intention to purchase individual products in an ensemble according to both his or her aesthetic response to and social impression of the ensemble grouping. Furthermore, the framework postulates that juxtaposing complementary items makes the information conveyed by their coordination more vivid and accessible than separating them does. Therefore, juxtaposition should enhance the effects of coordination.

A laboratory experiment with 577 undergraduate students was conducted to test the relationships hypothesized in the framework. Each participant was asked to evaluate a set of men’s casual wear and a set of women’s formal wear. The target items were a men’s blue Tshirt and a women’s yellow-green satin shirt. Complementary items (pants or bottoms) that were either consistent or inconsistent with the target items in color and style were chosen to create the poorly coordinated and well-coordinated groupings. The juxtaposition factor consisted of two types of separate display conditions ("separated by four dummies" and "separated with no intervening dummies") and a juxtaposed display condition. In the experiment, each participant was shown and asked to inspect a target item, a complementary item, and four dummy items (swimwear, bedsheets, etc.) in a predetermined sequence. In the "separated by four dummies" condition, the dummy items intervened between the displays of the target item and the complementary item. In the "separated with no intervening dummies" condition, the display of the target item followed the display of the complementary item. In the juxtaposed condition, the target and complementary items were displayed as an outfit on a fixture.

A step-down analysis was adopted to examine the sequential relationships in the framework. The analysis results indicate that coordination has a positive effect on the aesthetic response toward and the social impression of the product grouping. The aesthetic response and social impression have positive effects on consumers’ evaluation of the target item, which in turn has a positive effect on their intention to purchase the item. Furthermore, while coordination affects product evaluation positively through aesthetic response and social impression, it has an additional negative effect on product evaluation. For men’s casual wear, most of the relationships among coordination, aesthetic response, social impression, and product evaluation appear stronger when the target and complementary items are juxtaposed than when they are displayed separately. Therefore, the results support the framework overall.

In addition, the results show a negative bias in the effects of coordination and juxtaposition on consumers’ evaluation of and intention to purchase the target item. In the poorly coordinated condition, product evaluation and purchase intention are lower when the items are juxtaposed than when they are separated. In contrast, there is no significant difference between the juxtaposed and separate display conditions in product evaluation and purchase intention when the target item and the complementary item are well coordinated. One possible explanation for this finding is that in the juxtaposed, poorly coordinated condition, consumers’ negative response toward the product grouping may suppress their recollection of previously seen complementary items that may match the target item. Consequently, the rating of the target item is reduced. In addition to demonstrating and explaining the effects of coordination and juxtaposition, this paper provides several implications for retail management. First, the results suggest that even if two products are put on adjacent sides of a display stand, no coordination effect will arise from product aesthetics. Second, the results demonstrate that even when a target item is juxtaposed with a complementary item in a well-coordinated manner, the evaluation of the target item does not improve compared with its evaluation in separate display conditions. Therefore, insofar as product evaluation and purchase intention are concerned, retailers would not benefit by juxtaposing complementary items in a wellcoordinated manner. However, our results also show that in the well-coordinated condition, juxtaposing complementary items improves the aesthetic response and social impression of the product grouping. Because the enhanced aesthetic response and social impression may lead to certain favorable shopping outcomes (such as attracting consumers to visit a store), retailers may consider these merits in their visual merchandising decisions. Third, our results indicate that poor coordination of an ensemble depresses product evaluation and purchase intention. Consequently, retailers and manufacturers must ensure that complementary items juxtaposed as an ensemble are never poorly coordinated.