The arithmetic complexity of online grocery shopping: the moderating role of product pictures
| Published date | 08 July 2019 |
| Date | 08 July 2019 |
| Pages | 1206-1222 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-04-2018-0151 |
| Author | Camille Desrochers,Pierre-Majorique Léger,Marc Fredette,Seyedmohammadmahdi Mirhoseini,Sylvain Sénécal |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
The arithmetic complexity of
online grocery shopping: the
moderating role of product pictures
Camille Desrochers and Pierre-Majorique Léger
Department of Information Technology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales,
Montreal, Canada
Marc Fredette
Department of Decision Science, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales,
Montreal, Canada
Seyedmohammadmahdi Mirhoseini
Department of Information Technology, Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales,
Montreal, Canada, and
Sylvain Sénécal
Department of Marketing,
Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Montreal, Canada
Abstract
Purpose –Online grocery shopping possesses characteristics that can make it more difficult than regular
onlineshopping. There are numerousbuying decisions to make eachshopping session, there arelarge ranges of
product types to choose from and there is varied arithmetical complexity. The purpose of this paper is to
examinehow such characteristicsinfluence the attitude ofconsumers toward online groceryshopping websites.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors hypothesized that the product type (search or experience
product), the task arithmetic complexity, and the attention and cognitive load associated with browsing
through product pictures have an effect on the attitude of online shoppers toward these websites. To test the
hypotheses, 31 subjects participated in a within-subject laboratory experiment.
Findings –The resultssuggest that visual attention to productpictures has a positive effecton the attitude of
online shopperstoward a website when they areshopping for experience goods,but that it has a negative effect
on their attitude towarda website when the task arithmetic complexity is greater. They also suggest that the
cognitiveload associated with browsingthrough product pictures has a negativeeffect on the attitude of online
shoppers toward a website when they are shopping for experience goods, and that greater cognitive load
variation has a positive effect on their attitude toward a websitewhen arithmetic task complexityis greater.
Practical implications –When designing online grocery websites, providing clear single unit quantities
with pictures corresponding to the sales unit could help establish a clear baseline on which consumers can
work out their quantity requirements. For decisions involving experience goods, product pictures may act as
an important complementary information source and may even be more diagnostic than text description.
Originality/value –Results reinforce the relevance of enriching the study of self-reported measures of the
user experience on e-commerce sites with automatic measures.
Keywords Uncertainty, Human computer interaction, Electronic commerce, Visual attention, Eyetracking,
Online grocery, Arithmetic complexity, Attitude towards the site, Pupil dilation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Industry figures on the penetration rate of online grocery shopping show that it has been
progressing at a much slower pace than other consumer good categories. A recent report by
Nielsen (2017) shows that consumers purchase durable goods such as fashion (58 percent)
and electronics (40 percent) products much more than consumable goods such as packaged
grocery (24 percent) and fresh grocery (21 percent) products. Thus, it seems that consumers
prefer to shop in brick-and-mortar stores when they want to purchase grocery items.
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 119 No. 6, 2019
pp. 1206-1222
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/IMDS-04-2018-0151
Received 11 April 2018
Revised 18 December 2018
Accepted 8 February 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
1206
IMDS
119,6
To our knowledge, the characteristics of consumable goods and the nature of consumer
behavior in online grocery shopping have not been extensively studied by e-commerce
researchers. Most electronic commerce research has focused on shopping sessions during
which a limited number of items are purchased (e.g. Aljukhadar et al., 2012; Lee and Wu,
2017), but online grocery shopping sessions usually involve the purchase of a relatively
large number of items. Hansen’s (2005), but online grocery shopping sessions usually
involve the purchase of a relatively large number of items. Hansen’s (2005) study of the
consumer adoption of online grocery shopping shows that unlike consumers who buy
groceries online, consumers who do not buy groceries, but who do buy other goods on the
internet, perceive online grocery shopping as more complex than online shopping for
non-grocery goods. Therefore, improving understanding of the decision making involved in
online shopping for consumable goods should help explain why consumers have been slow
to adopt online grocery shopping, and it should also help online grocery managers develop a
better product offer. In this study, we examine factors that can play a role in the attitude of
consumers toward online grocery websites. Two constructs that affect decision making in
online grocery shopping are investigated: the uncertainty caused by the type of product
being purchased (i.e. search or experience product) and the arithmetical complexity of the
grocery shopping task. We explore how these two factors influence the attitude of
consumers toward online grocery websites. Because product pictures can play an important
role in grocery shopping (Hong et al., 2004), we also look into the moderating roles that
cognitive load and visual attention to product pictures can play in these relationships.
Literature review and hypotheses
Specificities of online grocery shopping
While researchon online shopping has been mostly focused on single-item shopping contexts
(e.g. Aljukhadar et al., 2012), online grocery shopping, which differs from a typical online
shopping task, has more rarely been studied (e.g. Hansen, 2005). Online grocery shopping
usually involves buying multiple items during a single online session in contrast with a
typical online shopping session in whichusers purchase a low number of items (e.g. a book).
Online grocery shopping can be considered asa shopping task composed of multiplesingle-
product purchase decisions (e.g. recipe list or complete grocery list). While each subtask can
take less time to perform than a typical online task, the whole process will scale linearly with
the number of items on the consumer’s list. Thus, it is not surprising that research findings
suggest that online grocery shoppers are primarily concerned with saving time and effort
(Anesbury et al., 2016).
Choice complexity and online grocery shopping
The decision-making process for each subtask can also be quite challenging for consumers.
A first consideration is that many food items, especially perishable foods, are not sold in
standard packages. Quantities are likely to involve decimals and variability in product
weights. Also, if a consumer is using a recipe to build a shopping list, he may already have a
partial inventory of the required ingredients at home. The decision-making process will
therefore involve subtractions when deciding on the quantity of product to purchase.
Consumers are likely to perform arithmetic operations to calculate the desired amount of a
product for many of these subtasks during the shopping session. In sum, consumers are
more likely to use fractions and subtractions in online grocery shopping compared to other
e-commerce transactions.
The neuroscience literature suggests that mathematical tasks mobilize higher cognitive
functions and that several regions of both the prefrontal cortex and the inferior parietal lobe
are involved in reasoning and calculation (Kroger et al., 2008; Swanson and Fung, 2016).
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The arithmetic
complexity of
online grocery
shopping
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