The heterogeneity of shoppers’ supermarket behaviors based on the use of carrying equipment

Nils Magne Larsen,Valdimar Sigurdsson,Jørgen Breivik,Jacob Lund Orquin

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.024

Nils Magne Larsen, Valdimar Sigurdsson + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.12.024

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Abstract

Research on in-store behavior has largely focused on shoppers with carts. In a study involving 15 stores and a total of 3540 shoppers, we document that only 20 percent of shoppers actually use shopping carts, while 28 percent use baskets and 51 percent use no carrying equipment. To better understand the role of carrying equipment, we collected data in a second study from 635 complete shopping trips using behavioral tracking technology and systematic sampling. We show that there is important heterogeneity in in-store behavior related to equipment and that carrying equipment is a suitable variable for segmenting shoppers. It is an objective and observable measure that consistently explains the variance in travel distance, shopping duration, store area coverage, walking speed, basket size, and shopper efficiency. We also find non-equipment trips to be least efficient, despite their popularity. The findings have implications for both research and retail practices.

Highlights

Academic research on what shoppers do in supermarkets is valuable but the handful of studies on shopper paths and in-store behavior is mostly restricted to shoppers using shopping carts with RFID tags on them
This points toward a problem as academic research on shopper paths and grocery buying behavior is mostly based on data from shoppers using shopping carts, meaning that short shopping trips are likely to be under-represented and non-cart behaviors ignored
While Sorensen et al (2017) focused on store area coverage between different store formats and store sizes, the current study demonstrates that there are important differences between shopping trips within a store, where choice of carrying equipment can be used as a behavioral segmentation

Summary

Introduction

Academic research on what shoppers do in supermarkets is valuable but the handful of studies on shopper paths and in-store behavior is mostly restricted to shoppers using shopping carts with RFID tags on them. Retail specialists report that shoppers worldwide generally tend to travel more frequently to grocery stores and that they prefer to shop at small grocery stores to a greater extent than before (Nielsen, 2015; Scamell-Katz, 2004; Steiner, 2018) To test this trend further, and to get more concrete figures, we systematically observed 3540 shopping trips to 15 different stores in five municipalities. Non-equipment trips represented the largest category of shopping trips overall and was shown to be widespread across all retailers and retail formats as 66.67 percent of the convenience store shopping trips involved no carrying equipment, 55.23 percent for discount stores, 46.25 percent for supermarkets, and 35.83 percent for hypermarkets This points toward a problem as academic research on shopper paths and grocery buying behavior is mostly based on data from shoppers using shopping carts, meaning that short shopping trips are likely to be under-represented and non-cart behaviors ignored. There is limited knowledge on how trips involving a shopping cart deviate from those involving a basket

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Conclusion