Understanding the Impact of Brand Delistings on Assortment Evaluations and Store Switching and Complaining Intentions

Recently, retailers have begun considering which brands they can delist without reducing customer satisfaction, losing category sales, or increasing store switching behavior. Although several studies have considered assortment reductions, none has explicitly investigated the impact of total brand delistings. Therefore, the authors study the impact of brand delistings on assortment evaluations and store switching and complaining intentions. They execute both a controlled experiment and a survey and find that brand delisting mainly has negative consequences when the delisted brands have high equity, assortment size is limited, the assortment consists of a low proportion of high-equity brands, and the brand delistings take place in categories with high hedonic levels. The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.