Heineken released Heineken Silver, positioning it as a lighter and more premium version of the regular Heineken lager. With the introduction of new products, shelf location in retail is always a point of debate. Will the product be seen on the store shelf?

In order to investigate what placement is best serving, Unravel Research conducts Eye Tracking experiments to test shelf layouts. This shelf layout research maps the attention value and experience of the product before its introduction to the market.

What is the best placement for a specific product?

The best shelf layout depends on the target product. For example: products (slightly below) eye level grab most attention, so every marketeer would like to put his/her target product there.

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But the layout does not only rely on the goal of the product, it also relies on its attributes.

Where do people (un)consciously look when looking for a light beer? Or a premium beer? This is where psychology comes in.

According to the natural expectations, a light item is always expected above a heavy item, or otherwise on the left of it (Sunaga et al., 2016).

The same holds true for premium products. Since budget products are usually placed on the bottom, this automatically creates the expectation of premium products to be placed on top (Chandon et al., 2009).

Left or top?

In both cases, there’s room to argue why it would work. Left placement is usually favorable because of the reading direction of most western countries. On the other hand, top placement has an advantage in that it’s more centered and closer to the 'hot spot'.

In the case of Heineken Silver where both premium and light attributes of the product could contribute to the most intuitive spot in the shelf, what’s better than to put it to the scientific test?

We've used RealEye as our webcam eyetracking technology vendor for this case.