Marketing study sees the grocery store through shoppers’ eyes

 
Be honest: How often do you walk out of the grocery store with items you never intended to purchase? If you have trouble sticking to the shopping list, you aren’t alone.
Two studies out of the University of Pittsburgh have found that many factors — everything from store layout to whether a shopper interacts with a store employee — can influence buying behaviors.
The first study, “The Effect of In-Store Travel Distance on Unplanned Spending: Applications to Mobile Promotion Strategies,” was a collaboration between J. Jeffrey Inman, a professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh’s Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, and professors and doctoral students from New York University, Drexel University and the University of Texas at Austin.
The Journal of Marketing recognized the research with its 2013 MSI H. Paul Root Award, which honors the paper that has made the biggest contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing.

Tracking shopper movements

The study found that, on average, shoppers cover half the territory in a grocery store, which is roughly 1,400 feet.
By using radio frequency identification tags to track exact movements in-store and comparing shoppers’ lists with their actual purchases, the study determined that for every additional 55 feet walked, an additional dollar was spent on unplanned purchases.
This was the world’s first study to use RFID tags for this purpose.
The research also found that smartphone-generated coupons increase shoppers’ unplanned spending by 16 percent.
“As retailing technology continues to improve and more consumers use mobile devices while they shop, our research will help managers do a better job of giving shoppers coupons they really want,” Inman says. “Both sides will benefit because stores will see more sales and shoppers can take advantage of lower prices.”

Understanding decision-making

Inman has studied a wide range of shopper marketing questions over the last two decades, but unplanned decision-making has been a primary interest as of late.
In a second study, “Deconstructing the ‘First Moment of Truth’: Understanding Unplanned Consideration and Purchase Conversion Using In-Store Video Tracking,” he and the same group of co-authors took their examination of unintended purchases one step further, this time using video cameras to capture data on the shopper’s point of view.
Key findings included:

  • A shopper’s decision time for an unplanned purchase is an average of 16 seconds longer than for a planned purchase.
  • A shopper’s average amount of in-store slack, or the shopper’s mental budget for unplanned purchases, is $11.
  • If a shopper considers an unplanned purchase but decides against it, they are more likely to make an unplanned purchase on their next purchase.
  • “Guilty pleasure” products, especially chocolate, are the most frequent unplanned purchases.
  • Unplanned purchase considerations tend to occur toward the end of shopping trips.
  • Nearly two-thirds of unplanned considerations turn into unplanned purchases.

What does this mean for stores?
“Retailers and companies who sell their products through retailers can improve the shop-ability of their stores and increase basket size,” Inman says.

Surprisingly, the research found that promotions had little effect on increasing the likelihood of an unplanned consideration converting into an unplanned purchase, although they were effective in catching a shoppers’ attention.