Understanding Consumer Reactions to Assortment Unavailability

consumers evaluate assortments that consist of two-thirds high-equity brands higher than they do
assortments with one-third high-equity brands (4.30 versus 3.84; F = 10.8, p < 0.01), and their
intention to switch stores is lower when the assortment consists of two-thirds high-equity brands
(3.14 versus 3.46; F = 4.7, p < 0.05), in support of H3a and H3b.
Table 3.2: ANOVA results
Assortment
Evaluation
71
Store Switching
Intention
Store Switching
Intention
Variable F-value p-value F-value p-value F-value p-value
Brand equity (BE) 15.08 0.000 20.203 0.000 8.423 0.002
Assortment size (AS) 5.835 0.008 3.027 0.042 0.471 0.245
Assortment structure (STR) 10.755 0.005 4.683 0.016 0.767 0.191
BE × STR 1.295 0.128 2.074 0.076 1.274 0.130
AS × STR 2.622 0.054 4.186 0.021 2.000 0.079
Assortment evaluation 139.86 0.000
Notes: p-values are one sided. Significant relations (p < 0.05) are bolded.
3.6.2 Interaction effects
Although H4a, which proposes an interaction effect between the brand equity of the delisted
brand and the assortment structure on AE, is not supported (F = 1.3, p > 0.10), we find weak
support for H4b (F = 2.1; p < 0.10), which predicts the effect for SSI (Fig. 2). As we show in
Figure 3.2, the assortment structure might reduce the absolute effect of brand equity on SSI. We
also find support for the hypothesized interaction effects between assortment structure and
assortment size (H5a: F = 2.6, p < 0.10; H5b: F = 4.2, p < 0.05), as we show in Figure 3.3. Thus,
the effect of assortment size in assortments with a high percentage of high-equity brands is
smaller than in assortments with a low percentage of high-equity brands.