Attentional Breadth Affects In-Store Exploration and Unplanned Purchasing

Maximizing shoppers’ in-store travel has become an important strategy to trigger unplanned purchasing (Gilbride, Inman, and Stilley 2015; Hui et al. 2013) because longer in-store travel exposes shoppers’ to relatively more products which may remind about forgotten needs or may even evoke new ones (Inman, Winer and Ferraro 2009). No research has, however, addressed the role of attentional breadth in shaping store exploration and unplanned purchasing. Attentional breadth refers to the focus that is directed to a wider or more limited area in processing visual scenes (Friedman et al. 2003). It is a malleable state and may become narrowed or broadened by prior visual processing. Relative to narrow attention, consumers with broad visual attention explore a larger proportion of the visual field, which increases their susceptibility to environmental stimuli (Wadlinger and Isaacowitz 2006). In retail setting, this should increase the likelihood to perceive objects of interest in the background, such as products in other areas of the store or signs and promotions. Because objects in background are spatially more remote than foreground objects approaching relatively more background products should increase the average travel distance per trip. And because longer travel distance further increases the likelihood to see a tempting product or one that reminds a consumer about forgotten needs (Gilbride, Inman, and Stilley 2015; Hui et al. 2013), we hypothesized that activating broad (vs. narrow) attention should increase unplanned purchasing (H1) by increasing the distance traveled in-store (H2). We further predicted that the effect of attentional breadth on unplanned purchasing would be accentuated among more impulsive buyers (H3 ) because prior research has shown that impulsive (vs. non-impulsive) shoppers are more susceptible to non-focal products (Büttner, Florack et al. 2014).