Search, Sales Assistance and Purchase Decisions: An Analysis Using Retail Video Data

Abstract

We investigate the roles of sales assistance and search in driving customer's purchase decision using unique observational video data from retail stores. The data contain visual descriptors of customers, the time they spent in interacting with salespersons (sales assistance) and browsing products (search), and are linked to their purchase decision. Our empirical specification is based on the process of customer deciding to engage in sales assistance and search to acquire information meaningful toward purchase decision. Thus, it treats sales assistance and search to be co-determined endogenous constructs. Exploiting this co-determination, our estimation strategy employs a novel control function approach to correct for this endogeneity using instruments pertaining to salesperson motivation to offer sales assistance. Our analysis reveals that both sales assistance and search play substantial roles which differ based on the context of specific decisions -- search has a more dominant role in purchase incidence, whereas the latter in conditional expenditure.