Does product sorting on a product web page influence decision-making?
In this research study the question was: Will decisions about which camera to buy on a website be influenced by the way the cameras were sorted on the web page? Specifically, the researchers Cai and Xu (2008, reference below) considered the perception of quality and price points, and whether presenting the product information in descending order, ascending order, or random order made a difference to the users’ decision making processes. The experiment had two phases. First, the researchers had 30 people rate the importance of different camera attributes. The question in this first phase was “What attributes of a camera do people consider when deciding which camera to buy?” The attributes that emerged as being most important were: • # of megapixels • strength of optical zoom • screen resolution • amount of zoom available digitally after the picture is taken In the second phase of the experiment, the researchers designed a simulated e-commerce site selling cameras. They used the above at
