Zhao Hui, Huang Fuxing, Spence Charles, Wan Xiaoang
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2017 Dec 13;8:2173. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02173. eCollection 2017.
Two experiments were conducted in a virtual reality (VR) environment in order to investigate participants' in-store visual search for bottles of wines displaying a prominent triangular shape on their label. The experimental task involved virtually moving along a wine aisle in a virtual supermarket while searching for the wine bottle on the shelf that had a different triangle on its label from the other bottles. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the participants identified the bottle with a downward-pointing triangle on its label more rapidly than when looking for an upward-pointing triangle on the label instead. This finding replicates the downward-pointing triangle superiority (DPTS) effect, though the magnitude of this effect was more pronounced in the first as compared to the second half of the experiment, suggesting a modulating role of practice. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that the DPTS effect was also modulated by the location of the target on the shelf. Interestingly, however, the results of a follow-up survey demonstrate that the orientation of the triangle did not influence the participants' evaluation of the wine bottles. Taken together, these findings reveal how in-store the attention of consumers might be influenced by the design elements in product packaging. These results therefore suggest that shopping in a virtual supermarket might offer a practical means of assessing the shelf standout of product packaging, which has important implications for food marketing.
为了研究参与者在店内对标签上显示突出三角形形状的葡萄酒瓶进行视觉搜索的情况，在虚拟现实（VR）环境中进行了两项实验。实验任务包括在虚拟超市的葡萄酒过道中虚拟移动，同时在货架上寻找标签上三角形与其他瓶子不同的葡萄酒瓶。实验1的结果显示，参与者识别标签上有向下指向三角形的瓶子比识别标签上有向上指向三角形的瓶子更快。这一发现重复了向下指向三角形优势（DPTS）效应，不过与实验后半部分相比，该效应在前半部分更为明显，表明练习起到了调节作用。实验2的结果显示，DPTS效应也受到货架上目标位置的调节。然而，有趣的是，后续调查结果表明三角形的方向并未影响参与者对葡萄酒瓶的评价。综合来看，这些发现揭示了店内消费者的注意力可能如何受到产品包装设计元素的影响。因此，这些结果表明在虚拟超市购物可能提供一种评估产品包装货架突出度的实用方法，这对食品营销具有重要意义。
