Gang the SKU on Shoppers

Displaying multiple versions of the same product—such as five replicates of a cordless drill model in an ad or an array of a household cleanser package for a store display—builds in consumers a perception that the product is powerful and a good value. The University of Cincinnati, University of Miami, and University of Georgia researchers who documented this acknowledge that featuring an item in isolation—such as with white space around it in an ad—indicates other benefits, such as scarcity or luxury. Balance these considerations in deciding how to display the item.
     The explanation for the gang effect is “entitativity,” which refers to the extent to which a collection of related items is viewed as a single entity. When shoppers see five identical visual images, they tend to consider the five as one unit. Five of anything are more powerful than one of that same thing. This implication carries over subconsciously to consideration of each single item in the collection.
     Discount marketers make use of entitativity in the form of power aisles—those shelves with the overwhelming numbers of a limited selection of products which researchers at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Youngstown State University have shown give the impression of high returns for the money spent. Entitativity implies efficacy.
     Entitativity research has its roots in person perception, not item perception, and person perception provide an example of the phenomenon sometimes being to the detriment of a marketer. Researchers at University of Michigan and London Business School analyzed funding activity on Kiva.org, a micro-financing site. On the site, photos and descriptions are presented of people seeking small loans for commercial endeavors. The researchers were interested in what happened with listings which included photos of a group of fund seekers. Some of these photos were judged in a preliminary study to show a group who looked tightly organized, as if ready to act as one.
     Those appeals were more quickly funded than the appeals in which the group looked loosely organized. Those researchers also found that charitable donations to help poor children were higher when the children were described as belonging to the same family than when not. However, when the researchers described the charity recipients as a cohesive group of child prisoners, the average donation amount was less than when the “child prisoners” were shown as isolated individuals. Power here was viewed by consumers as a negative.

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