E Pluribus Unum : Exploring the Effects of Billboarding on Consumer Brand Responses

Many marketers design their product packaging so that when individual units are positioned together, they form a coordinated and often larger image that spans multiple package faces. The authors coin the term “billboarding” to refer to this practice that blends product packaging and retail display and whose effectiveness remains unexplored in the marketing literature. They document that billboarding improves consumer responses and operates through a combination of heightened artistic perceptions of the brand display and consumer feelings of serendipity. Using an empirical approach that incorporates field data and experiments, the authors present eight studies that support this perspective. Because marketers are concerned that the improper implementation of billboarding can backfire, the authors further explore several moderators related to in-store (disorganized and incomplete billboarding) and design (image type) factors to understand how to maximize its utility. They further examine conceptual fluency as a moderator and show that the positive effects of billboarding are significantly weaker when the product category is conceptually less fluent with the inclusion of artistic qualities. This research offers the first examination of an important marketing tool that may help brand managers circumvent uncooperative retailers and advance actionable insights that are likely to boost consumer responses.