Shedding light on retail environments

This paper presents an overview of research into consumer responses to lighting within retail stores using mobile eye-tracking. It begins with a brief review of pertinent literature in relation to lighting and visual attention. The study is small scale and experimental, using 3 scenarios with different lighting patterns on a visual merchandising unit. Tobii Mobile™ glasses were used to provide naturalistic visual attention data of consumer responses to the unit. Eye-tracking data was time interval content analysed by lighting scenario and position of focal attention on the unit. Data was subsequently analysed using repeated measures ANOVA to assess correlations. Findings highlight methodological implications as well as the roles of lighting and position of products. Future research directions are discussed.