How Product Display Orientation Affects Customers’ Choice Satisfaction in Online Purchase: A Choice Closure Perspective

Practice- and Policy-oriented Abstract Research Spotlights The current research offers practical guidance for e-commerce websites on effectively displaying products to improve customer satisfaction with their choices and reduce order cancellations, a challenge that has long perplexed online retailers. Specifically, a horizontal (versus vertical) display of comparable products on an e-commerce website is more positively related to customer choice satisfaction by promoting a higher level of choice closure. Our findings suggest that if e-commerce platforms are designing a new interface, they may consider adopting a horizontal display as a beneficial starting point. However, when a vertical design has been adopted for certain reasons, online retailers can incorporate cues of finality (e.g., putting a “the end” mark at the end of a product display) to help customers finalize their choices and achieve choice satisfaction, thereby mitigating potential downsides associated with vertical display layouts.