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Consumer-defined assortments: application of card-sorting to category management

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Abstract

Category management theory and practice have traditionally overlooked the role of the consumer in defining category boundaries. Industry-based criteria do not necessarily overlap with the perceptual view of the assortment held, implicitly or explicitly, by consumers. This research aims to propose a methodological approach to derive a customer-oriented shelf layout from customer perceptions of product similarities and to empirically test if adopting such a consumer-oriented shelf layout significantly affects consumers’ in-store perceptions and reactions. In two studies, we show that consumer-based shelf layouts determine higher levels of store satisfaction because of the higher level of fit between product display on the shelves and consumers’ cognitive categorization of the assortment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, University of Bologna, Via Capo di Lucca 34, Bologna, 40126, Italy

    Gabriele Pizzi & Gian Luca Marzocchi

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  1. Gabriele Pizzi
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  2. Gian Luca Marzocchi
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Correspondence to Gabriele Pizzi.

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Pizzi, G., Marzocchi, G.L. Consumer-defined assortments: application of card-sorting to category management. Ital. J. Mark. 2020, 67–84 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-020-00005-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43039-020-00005-6

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