Position-based beliefs: The center-stage effect

This paper examines the existence and consequences of consumers' position-based beliefs about product layouts. We propose that consumers believe that options placed in the center of a simultaneously presented array are the most popular. This belief translates into their choosing options placed in the center more often than those on the sides of a display: the center-stage effect (Studies 1 and 5). Results are driven by inferences of product popularity rather than higher levels of attention to products in a given position (Studies 2 and 3). The preference for middle options is accentuated when people explicitly take into account other people's preferences, increasing the need to choose a popular option (Study 3), but attenuated when layout-based information is not diagnostic (Study 4). Increasing the accessibility of own preferences for the intrinsic attributes about the products reduces the use of position-based beliefs to make judgments and attenuates the center-stage effect (Study 5). Theoretical implications for marketplace meta-cognitions, visual information processing, position effects, and the use of overall cognitive beliefs versus perceptual attention and memory-based individuating information to make judgments are discussed.