Middle ground: How businesses should deal with our love of the middle

Do you tend to select wine from the middle of the list?  Order a meal that is neither too expensive nor cheap? Donate amounts that are somewhere between the highest and lowest? As consumers we most typically avoid extremes when selecting from a list of items, preferring instead to cluster around the middle.   Some recent research reported in Research Digest has added additional scientific weight to this behaviour, known as "Center Stage Effect".


In the most recent study, researchers Rodway, Schepman, and Lambert found a preference for the middle across both horizontal (moving left to right) and vertical (top to bottom) displays.  From this you can take two immediate actions for your website and/or printed collateral such as menus or product brochures.


1. Be smart about the sequence of items
Knowing that most people will select from the middle rather than first or last items, consider how you position items with the best margin.  Listing your highest margin wine as the cheapest will mean you are probably leaving money on the table because most customers will avoid the wine for fear of being thought a cheap skate.  Likewise, your most expensive wine should not necessarily be the one with greatest margin because volume will be low.  


Contrast a wine list on the left (image 1) that does not use price sequencing to influence purchase,  and image 2 on the right that does.  Image 2 takes better advantage of the Center Stage Effect.

2. Be smart about how you style the display of items 
You have a choice to work with or against the Center Stage Effect according to your business objectives. If it is to your advantage to encourage the customer to avoid extremes, style the middle of your list to capture visual attention. If however you want to counteract the Effect, you will need to visually style the list to drag attention away from the middle.


Image 3 provides additional visual cues to persuade the customer's choice for the middle option whereas image 4 pulls attention away from the center by styling the left-most laptop differently to the others.  

3. Visual emphasis given to middle option 

4. Item on left distinguished through styling 

With knowledge of the Center Stage Effect you can make deliberate choices about how you influence your customers, making it work in your favour.  With that, I'll exit stage left.


Interested in finding out more?  Email me at bri@peoplepatterns.com.au for an obligation free chat about your business.




Rodway, P., Schepman, A., and Lambert, J. (2012). Preferring the One in the Middle: Further Evidence for the Centre-stage Effect. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 26 (2), 215-222 DOI: 10.1002/acp.1812 cited in http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/people-prefer-middle-option.html