What did the practical implementation look like?
Dr. Streicher: We used digital displays to manipulate the breadth of attention of customers in a mini market on the Innsbruck university campus. These are the types of displays that are widely used as advertising formats in stores.
For a broad focus, we displayed random and consecutive product images on the left or right periphery of the screen (using spatial diffusion), while the same images always appeared in the middle to render a narrow focus. The participants then received mobile eye tracking systems that allowed us to study their eye movements. Participants were positioned in front of a candy shelf and asked to select products. The participants who were previously shown images at the periphery of the screen looked at notably more areas of the candy rack than the control group, who were shown the same images in the middle of the screen. The test subjects also had far more items in their baskets in the end: Both the total quantity and product variety were increased.
For the second study in a supermarket in Tyrol (Austria), we gave the customers pedometers. Once again, they were shown product images via a display before they started shopping. Much like in the study described earlier 50 percent of the research participants were shown spatially distributed product images that appeared randomly in different screen areas and were directed at broad attention. The other half were shown the same images in the center of the screen.
While those customers whose attention was narrowly focused walked ca. 240 meters inside the store, customers subjected to broad attentional focus walked over 300 meters. It is also interesting to note that the percentage of unplanned purchases in the customers' shopping carts doubled