Understanding Consumer Reactions to Assortment Unavailability

and to such a level that retailers would have difficulty delisting it. Thus, brand equity increases
not only the price premium that consumers are willing to pay but also manufacturer power when
negotiating buying conditions with retailers. Furthermore, as store loyalty in general is stronger
than brand loyalty, manufacturers should develop strategies to connect the customer to their
brands. For instance, Unilever developed its own consumer magazine Yata Yata that is
distributed directly to households. With this magazine, Unilever aims to improve the link
between the consumer and the Unilever brands.
3.13 Limitations and further research
A major limitation of our research is that the results in both studies are based on hypothetical
situations. A possible drawback of this research design is that people do not always act the way
they claim they would or have difficulty imagining what action they would take. This limitation
may lower the external validity of the reported brand delisting responses. Therefore, we suggest
that additional research should test the effects of actual brand delistings, though retailers may not
be willing to cooperate with research in which several high-equity brands are delisted across
several product groups. Another limitation of our study is that we measure the effect of a brand
delisting among buyers of the delisted brand and therefore cannot comment on how nonbuyers of
the delisted brand may react. The AE of nonbuyers of a delisted brand may even be more
favorable after the delisting because fewer brands in the category might lower their search costs.
Further research therefore should test the effect of a brand delisting on the assortment
perceptions of nonbuyers.
Additional research also could focus on the long-term effects of brand delistings, because
the majority of assortment reduction studies have considered only short-term effects. Brand
delistings also are not executed in isolation. For example, a brand delisting may be accompanied
by an increase in the service level of the store or the addition of new categories (e.g., bakery,
coffee stand, more fresh food), which might eliminate some of the negative consequences of
brand delistings. Moreover, consumers may be confronted with multiple brand delistings in a
single and/or multiple categories, so further research should study this issue.
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