Row and Order:a consumer-oriented approach to define retailers shelf layouts ’

Category management theory and practice have traditionally overlooked the role of the consumer in defining how products should be sorted on retail shelves. However, industry-based criteria do not necessarily overlap with the perceptual view of the assortment held, implicitly or explicitly, by consumers. This work challenges the current practice of exposing consumers to shelf layouts organized following industry-based criteria. Building on the most recent research, the present work suggests and empirically demonstrates that consumers react more favorably when the shelving criterion is defined starting from consumers’ percep- tions of similarity between the products. Results 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. Accordingly, the present work contributes by stimulating the adoption of a consumer-based perspective in retailing research and practice, especially in the domain of category management which is currently dominated by an industry-based perspective. It proposes a methodological and practical approach to derive a customer-oriented shelf layout from customer perceptions of product similarities which is completely novel in the domain of retailing. Finally, it provides an empirical test of the consequences for retailers stemming from the adoption of such approach as opposed to a more traditional, industry-based one in terms of customer satisfaction, return intention and purchased amount