Book belly band as a visual cue: Assessing its impact on consumers’ in-store responses
Introduction
Like in most retailing contexts, a brick-and-mortar bookshop typically features marketing stimuli that may potentially act on consumers' browsing and purchasing behaviors (Carpenter et al., 1994; Gilbride et al., 2015; Leitão et al., 2018; Miller, 2006; Zhu et al., 2011; Reinares-lara and Martín-santana, 2019). Consequently, consumers come to rely on product packaging that combines aesthetic and sensory characteristics, which helps to differentiate products visually and focus one's attention (Ampuero and Vila, 2008; Mai et al., 2016; Pieters and Wedel, 2007).
In a bookstore, the cover of the book is the most apparent packaging cue: It features a multitude of visual and textual elements (e.g., colors and images, the author, the title) that consumers may use to cope with information overload (Kardes et al., 2004; Zhu et al., 2011). In this narrow space for consumers’ attention, marketers have adopted a supplementary packaging cue called the belly band: a colored paper strip that wraps around the book. Widely used as advertising tools, belly bands include two major sensory elements—the background color and the printed text. The background is typically a bright monochrome color, while the text usually takes the form of a blurb: an (often exaggerated) expression of praise for the author or the book itself (Gagliano, 2014; Hollick, 2018).
In other real-world retailing contexts, and particularly in food retailing, scholars have analyzed the varying influence of different packaging cues on consumers' responses, whether those cues involve shape, color, pictures, brand names or eco-labels (van Esch et al., 2019; Garretson and Burton, 2005; Labrecque et al., 2013; Kim et al., 2020; Mai et al., 2016; Minton et al., 2018; Pancer et al., 2017; Zhu et al., 2011). To the best of our knowledge, the scientific literature features no attempts at analyzing the belly band as a visual cue and assessing its impact on consumers' in-store responses. Against this background, specific features of belly bands make them worthy of investigation. First, publishers must spend money to print belly bands, while retailers must commit time and effort to add them to books after some special event (e.g., a TV series following the book), as in this case, publishers do not typically send the books with the belly bands already in place (Hollick, 2018). Second, the belly band is not simply a logo or a promotional sticker; rather, it is a combination of visual and textual elements. Third, because it can be added or removed, the belly band can complete the packaging in different moments and contexts, but its lack of solidity can also provoke irritation (“Belly bands on books are actually rather a pain in the neck”; Hollick, 2018). Fourth, it is primarily a marketing tool in brick-and-mortar retailing since online retailers prefer other promotional tools. Therefore, what makes the belly band interesting as a packaging cue is the presence of a double paradox. The first paradox is theoretical: On the one hand, the belly band is a simple visual packaging cue aimed at attracting consumers' attention; on the other hand, the blurbs printed on it provide complex verbal information aimed at stimulating consumers’ cognitive elaboration. The second paradox is practical: The belly band is a costly packaging element that is used extensively, and at the same time, it is seen as annoying, useless and disposable by booksellers and librarians.
In this study, we shed light on the belly band's influence as a packaging cue on consumers' in-store responses. In line with cue utilization theory (Richardson et al., 1994), we empirically support the idea that consumers' attention is primarily captured by the color of the belly band, which then translates into cue elaboration (e.g., Clore et al., 2001; van Esch et al., 2019; Miceli et al., 2014; Townsend and Kahn, 2014; Velasco Vizcaíno, 2018). Our study also suggests that the emotional reaction to the visual cue (the belly band) has behavioral repercussions regardless of whether consumers cognitively elaborate on the verbal elements (Elliot and Maier, 2014; Kareklas et al., 2019; Labrecque et al., 2013). Further, our field data show that the belly band modifies basket composition without affecting the mental budget that consumers establish before entering the store (Stilley et al., 2010). Finally, our field experiment relies on actual behavioral data, offering maximum realism by observing real customers in bookstores (Moorman et al., 2019; Morales et al., 2017).
Section snippets
Theoretical background and hypotheses development
According to cue utilization theory, consumers have limited processing capabilities and likely rely on cues that support memory retrieval and information processing (Loy et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 1994; Wedel and Pieters, 2014). Consumers develop various impressions of products by assessing their array of intrinsic cues (e.g., taste, texture, aroma) and extrinsic cues (e.g., price, brand name, packaging, color) (van Esch et al., 2019; Jacoby et al., 1971; Olson and Jacobi, 1972;
Pilot study
Due to the lack of theoretical and empirical research on the belly band, we first conducted a pilot study to assess whether the belly band is primarily a visual or verbal cue. We selected three stores located in a medium-sized city center and three located in a commercial center in Italy. As customers approached the exit, an interviewer asked them to indicate whether they had purchased a book. When a customer purchased multiple books, the customer was asked to indicate the first that came to
Discussion and conclusions
This study contributes to the extant literature in three ways. First, this paper contributes to cue utilization theory (Richardson et al., 1994) by emphasizing the importance of visual cues on consumers' responses. In fact, the pilot and lab results suggest that consumers' attention is primarily stimulated by the band's color and not by the text reported on it (i.e., the blurb). In turn, the color facilitates cue elaboration, reinforcing previous scholars' argument that visual cues are superior
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank prof. Chiara Orsingher for her kind support and useful insights.
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