Checkout Lanes Research Articles

Changing the Food Environment One Checkout Lane at a Time

Changing the Food Environment One Checkout Lane at a Time

Trade politics at the checkout lane: ethnocentrism and consumer preferences

AbstractAs international trade flourishes, Americans can choose from an increasing number of foreign products even at their local grocery stores, allowing consumers to directly experience the consequences of globalized trade in a simple and intuitive way that does not require much political expertise. Yet, most prior scholarship on political consumerism assumes that consumers are aware of the political and economic implications of their choices at the checkout lane. We move away from this assumption, focusing instead on more fundamental psychological predispositions such as ethnocentrism that may guide daily consumer choices. Using a discrete choice conjoint experiment, we show that Americans, on average, exhibit ethnocentric consumer preferences, with demand for products falling as they are produced in more culturally and ethnically distant places. Additionally, we show that this effect is more pronounced among those with higher levels of ethnocentrism. Our results provide evidence for a “naïve” form of political consumerism.

The Potential for Healthy Checkout Policies to Advance Nutrition Equity.

Background: As the only place in a store where all customers must pass through and wait, the checkout lane may be particularly influential over consumer purchases. Because most foods and beverages sold at checkout are unhealthy (e.g., candy, sweets, sugar-sweetened beverages, and salty snacks), policymakers and advocates have expressed growing interest in healthy checkout policies. To understand the extent to which such policies could improve nutrition equity, we assessed the prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of purchasing items found at (i.e., from) checkout. Methods: We assessed self-reported checkout purchasing and sociodemographic characteristics in a national convenience sample of adults (n = 10,348) completing an online survey in 2021. Results: Over one third (36%) of participants reported purchasing foods or drinks from checkout during their last grocery shopping trip. Purchasing items from checkout was more common among men; adults < 55 years of age; low-income consumers; Hispanic, non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native, and non-Hispanic Black consumers; those with a graduate or professional degree; parents; and consumers diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes (p-values < 0.05). Conclusions: Purchasing foods or beverages from store checkouts is common and more prevalent among low-income and Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Black consumers. These results suggest that healthy checkout policies have the potential to improve nutrition equity.

Evaluation of a Healthy Checkout Lane "Nudge" on Grocery and Convenience Store Sales of a Price-Promoted Nutritious Food.

Grocery store intervention trials, including trials testing behavioral economics "nudges," may change food-purchasing behaviors and improve diet quality. This study aimed to design and evaluate a grocery store healthy checkout lane "nudge" intervention on sales of a targeted healthy item. We conducted a randomized controlled trial based on the behavioral economic concept of cognitive fatigue and the marketing concept of impulse buying. Six grocery stores from one North Carolina-based chain were randomized to the intervention (n = 3) or control (n = 3) condition. Researchers tested a 4-week healthy checkout lane intervention, in which intervention stores moved 6-ounce cans of peanuts to the cash registers. Cashiers were instructed to upsell the peanuts to all shoppers at checkout. While not a component of the intervention, the retailer decreased the price of the peanuts from $1.99 to $1.50 during the first 2 weeks of the intervention. Fidelity to the checkout display was high. Fidelity to the upsell was low. The main outcome measure was aggregated store-level sales of the promoted peanuts for 4 weeks before the intervention and during the 4-week intervention period. On average, sales increased by 10 units/week in intervention stores (5.83 vs. 15.83 units, p = .04) with no significant change in control stores (1.42 vs. 1.17 units, p = .64). The difference (10 vs. -0.25 units, p = .02) was likely due to displaying the peanuts at checkout combined with the price promotion. Larger randomized controlled trials should examine whether healthy checkout lane interventions are effective "nudges" for promoting purchases of healthier foods in grocery stores.

The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-it-Yourself Economy

Reviewer: Craig D. Lair, Gettysburg College Utilizing the case study of self-checkouts in supermarkets, The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets, and the Do-it-Yourself Economy by Christopher K. Andrews is a cogently argued and well-supported book that provides key insights into a number of major debates surrounding the use and consequence of self-service technologies. Andrews bases his analysis on a multimethod study of a regional supermarket chain he refers to as “SuperFood” that includes: eight months of nonparticipant observation of people in checkout lanes in seven Superfood stores; 77 semi-structured interviews from a combination of store managers, assistant managers, employees, customers, and union representatives; and a variety of secondary data sources. The strength of Andrews’ analysis lies in showing how many of the pronouncements regarding self-checkouts are variously misguided, off-the-mark, and/or more complicated than their claimants suggest. Thus, this book sheds new and important light on a major transformation in consumption. However, it should be noted that the title of the book is a bit of misnomer because the issue of consumers feeling overworked as a result of self-service technologies is only one of the topics this book addresses. Below, I will outline what I see as the five core questions that The Overworked Consumer seeks to answer.

Analysis On The Effect Of Express Checkouts In Retail Stores

In this study, we investigate the effect of having express checkout lanes in retail stores. Express checkout lanes are being used to reduce expected wait time of small-buying customers, but their operational effect has not been analyzed so far. By comparing the wait time and the queue length of the two scenarios (universal checkout lanes only and separated checkout lanes with express counters) via simulation, we have found that the average wait time of the separated checkout lanes may not be shorter than that of universal checkout lanes. This may be due to that the effect of pooling servers decreases as the number of servers being pooled at each checkout set decreases. The queue length of express checkout lanes may be shorter than that of universal checkout lanes, but in some cases, the average queue length of separated checkout lanes is longer than that of universal checkout lanes, probably due to the effect of pooling servers. By conducting a computational study, we have observed that the effect of pooling servers decreases with customer arrival rate, decreases with regular checkout duration, and slightly increases with regular checkout time variability. These results give us an insight on when the express checkout counters can be effective in retail service operations.

Underage alcohol-purchasing strategies and alcohol availability through self-checkout lanes in supermarkets

ABSTRACTBackground: To prevent alcohol availability through retail, legal age limits forbid the sale of alcohol to minors in many countries. This study tested the effects of minors’ alcohol-purchasing strategies and knowledge of compliance with age-limit legislation on the availability of alcohol through retail in the Netherlands. Methods: Making use of exploratory, field-experimental design, eight 17-year-old minors participated as mystery shoppers over the period of one weekend. The mystery shoppers were allowed to use their own strategies to buy alcohol. The experiences of the first group were shared with the second group. Results: Out of the 134 times, the shoppers entered an outlet to buy alcohol, and 119 attempts were successful (11.2% compliance). A total quantity of 225.78 US gallons of alcohol-containing beverages was bought. The first group bought 53.93 L on their final day, and the second group bought 53.92 L on their first day, making use of the strategies of the first group. Conclusions: Current self-checkout lanes in supermarkets produce extreme alcohol availability and are even less effective than traditional checkout lanes: Policies for age verification fail. This first small-scale study shows that underage mystery shoppers learn quickly and are able to buy more alcohol with each subsequent visit.

Information, Choice and Political Consumption: Human Rights in the Checkout Lane

Politically motivated consumption behaviors (such as boycotts) are a significant source of human rights mobilization, yet the roots of individual consumption decisions are under-explored in the human rights literature. This article uses original national survey data to evaluate key factors that influence individual decisions to stop purchasing products for broader social purposes, highlighting the role that personal interest, access to particular types of information, and a sense of efficacy play in shaping the decision to consume ethically.

Can You Fathom This? Connecting Data Analysis, Algebra, and Geometry with Probability Simulation

Without question, students live in an increasingly data-driven world. Data analysis plays a prominent role in various facets of modern life: Schools evaluate and revise programs on the basis of test scores; policymakers make decisions on the basis of information gleaned from polling data; supermarkets stock shelves on the basis of data collected at checkout lanes. Not surprisingly, this increased reliance on data has significantly influenced the teaching and learning of school mathematics. The study of data analysis and probability—a rarity in the secondary school curriculum twenty years ago (Boland and Nicholson 1996)—is now commonplace.

Rethinking the Book

As we near end of first decade of twenty-first century, interest in practice of readers' advisory (RA) continues to be strong, as evidenced by range of RA programs offered at conferences, resources created in both print and electronic formats, and expanding number of readers' advisors. As value of readers' advisory is increasingly accepted across library community, practitioners are looking at new directions to take RA services. Here, David Beard and Kate Vo Thi-Beard examine possibilities that a stronger understanding of reading theory offer for readers' advisors. The authors call for a closer tie between research into reading behavior and practice of readers' advisory in library. David Beard is Assistant Professor of Writing Studies at University of Minnesota-Duluth, where he researches interdisciplinary approaches to rhetoric and literacy. Kate Vo Thi-Beard is a doctoral student in School of Library and Information Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her areas of interest include visual and popular media (including graphic novels and magazines), multiculturalism, and LIS education.--Editor Readers' Advisory is experiencing a renaissance in library practice and critical reflection. As a result, we better understand tools of readers' advisory (RA), uses of those tools (especially online tools), and pressures that falling budgets and increasingly varied library collections place upon traditional RA work. But there is a limitation inherent in RA derived from its emphasis on book rather than practice of reading. The bulk of literature on RA and bulk of its tools focus on book as an object. There is a strange faith that, if we find better ways to describe object, we can more easily connect object to patron. Such efforts are important; being able to describe a novel in terms of its genre, setting, characters, and plots is an important first step in RA. But research in literacy challenges idea that readers select a book based on its features. A simple example of current practice makes clear our position. If a young person liked Harry Potter, give them a book with a wizard; it has same features, after all. If you enjoy Anita Blake vampire stories, try Anne Rice--her books have vampires, too. Why do we presume that this approach makes for effective RA? This essay makes three moves. First, it makes clear state of art in RA practice and RA tools. Then, it places that practice and those tools in productive tension with current research in reading behavior. Finding that current models for RA are out of step with research on why people read, we can then probe question, what would RA look like if it were inflected by current research in literacy practices? DEFINING READERS' ADVISORY RA is akin to reference because it's an interaction between patron and library staff with general aim to connect patron to resources--whether fictional, informational, or both. (Jessica Moyer talks about the theory of 'incidental information acquisition.' (1) For instance, by reading a contemporary romance novel set in Italy, readers may feel that they learn about country's features.) RA is an organic extension of array of reference services already offered in library. Maybe equally important for library as a social institution, RA establishes a connection between patron and library According to RA Committee of Reference and User Services Association's Collection Development and Evaluation Section, at its core, reader/librarian interaction is a discussion about books.... The goal of readers' advisory transaction is to make reader feel that library is a welcoming place to come and talk about stories that are important to them. (2) The RA interaction is what distinguishes a library from a stack of books at checkout lane at grocery story. …

Keeping TaB: A Diet Soft Drink Shelf Life

If there's heritage to brand and the brand has withstood the test of time maybe there's story to tell. -Jeffrey Himmel, CEO, Himmel Group, New York Since its formulation in 1963, the Coca-Cola Company's offspring, Tab, has transcended standard diet soft drink status to become quirky yet enduring cultural icon that invites contradiction, curiosity, and anachronistic quips. Taste tests alone yield divergent responses along the soft drink spectrum. Self-professed Tabaholics pronounce the beverage an elixir of the gods, likening sip to crisp Chardonnay (McKay Bl). More cautious, less complimentary cola connoisseurs characterize Tab's taste as sassy (Giges, Why 2), mysterious (Bryant), or a good tart coke (Alien 320), while dissenters dismiss Tab with distasteful descriptions such as diety, peppery, astringent, and metallic (McKay Bl). Likewise, Tab's presence at the grocery check-out lanes invites contrasting glances from bar-code scanning clerks, often denned along generational lines, the older response being, didn't know they still made that stuff, while the standard younger remark is, Oh, is this new drink?1 Tab's liquid life is one of peculiar perseverance. Tabloid is progression of points from pioneer and possibility to potential poison, paradox, and parody. beverage's cultural context extends beyond calorie consciousness to contain corporate conflict within Coca-Cola, cancer concerns, cola canmbahzation, the clear movement, and kitschy, comedic characterizations in film and television narratives. In its four decades, Tab has survived the cyclamate and saccharine scare of the 1970s, the arrival of Diet Coke in the 1980s and the cola wars that followed, and the saturation of sport drinks and bottled water in the 1990s. In today's sea of beverages, overflowing with more than nine hundred brands of bottled water and cola competitors in newmillennium mode adding lemon twists, berry blue fusions, and cherry and vanilla retro revivals, Tab still manages minuscule market share and clinging subcultural following. Tabloid: A Quirky Low-Calorie Chronicle dawn of new era manifesto that permeated American culture during the 1960s had widespread ripples that reached even the soft drink industry. decade marked significant turning point in the rivalry between its two leaders, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, as they encountered changing consumer composition and climate. A surge of young consumers from the postwar baby boom unveiled thirst for soft drink flavors other than cola. In addition, beverage buyers became increasingly interested in convenience packaging and distribution through vending machines and nonreturnable bottles. modernized mentality of the marketplace meant image alteration for the cola companies. Coca-Cola's identity considered old fashioned and part of the World Wars I and II generations, while Pepsi the drink of their children. Coke responded paradoxically with reluctance and necessary aggression. company broke its seventy-five-year tradition by introducing noncola beverage, Sprite, and new line of popular flavors under the brand name Fanta. It also began experimentation with canned drinks. Pepsi countered by producing its own lemon-lime drink, Teem, and line of flavors called Patio. Another significant factor emerging within the collective cultural, consumer, and cola consciousness calorie counting. During the 1950s, women in particular had become increasingly calorie conscious. preoccupation with appearance escalated during the early 1960s. Among the contributing factors was the high-profile presence of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, whose slim elegance provided an image many sought to emulate. Market surveys in the early 1960s indicated that twenty-eight percent of the population in America were watching their weight. The bulging waistline and middle age spread has taken on proportions of national calamity, wrote one commentator characterizing the cultural (out of) condition (Pendergrast 283). …

Compliance with the item limit of the food supermarket express checkout lane: another look.

A total of 68 15-min. observations of customers' behavior at a food supermarket suggests that only about 7% of shoppers observe the item limit of the express lane. The averages tended to be about four pieces.

Compliance with the Item Limit of the Food Supermarket Express Checkout Lane: An Informal Look

A total of 75 15-min. observations of customers' behavior at a food supermarket suggests that only about 15% of shoppers observe the item limit of the express lane. The overages tend to be limited to approximately 1 to 3 pieces.

Defining the Supermarket “Item”: An Informal Look

Most food supermarkets appear to have some sort of an express checkout lane arrangement for customers with a small number of items, generally 10 or less. Variations include having the lane operational throughout the day or only during peak periods, accepting any type of tender or limiting transactions to cash sales, and packing for the customer or requiring them to pack for themselves A review of the literature, and a query of the Food Marketing Institute (Washington, DC), suggesting no standardized definition of an item, the seemingly key operational element, a Lrmrcd informal inquiry was conducted to determine how this term is construed in practice. During the spring and summer of 1990, one checker at each of 63 different supermarkets in a large urban area in the northeast selected on a convenience basis, was questioned as to how she defined an express lane item. The following interrogatory was presented: if a six-pack of soda is considered one item, would six individual cans of the same type of soda be considered one item or six items? None of those providing answers were in managerial positions; all of the stores were outlets of nine regional chains; about two-thirds of the checkers were women and one-third men. No attempt was made to ascertain whether the answers provided were personal preferences, store practice, or company policy. Checkers who declined to answer or provided conditional responses were not counted. All of those responding were employed in stores having a mechanized, rather than a manual, checkout system. Thirty-three checkers (52%) sald that the six cans of soda would be treated as one item; the remalnlng 30 checkers (48%) would consider it as six items. There was no marked difference noted between women and men in the responses, nor was there any consistency observed among checkers of the same chain, but in different stores. While not specifically examined, intuitively it was felt that the definition of an item was a matter of individual store preference and policy, with checkers having discretion as to interpretation and enforcement. Recognizing the inherent subjectivity of the methodology, the presence of local cultural biasing, and the limitations on replication of the inquiry, the results suggest the potential for stress for both shoppers and checkers. While low to moderate amounts of stress can sometimes be beneficial, higher levels tend to have deleterious effects, such as needless negatlve shifts in moods, unnecessary illness, and unwarranted mental exhuastion. As it would sccm reasonable that food shopping should generally not be a contributing factor to the amount of aggravation encountered in life, food marketea might want to give some thought to standardizing the definition of the express lane item. In these hectic days of the overload society, every bit of pressure relief counts.

Omnidirectional Laser Scanner For Supermarkets

A laser scanner for reading the Universal Product Code on grocery packages in a supermarket checkout lane is described. The problems associated with reading five sides (bottom and four sides) of a package are discussed in terms of the bit-rate, spot-size, and angle of incidence variations in different orientations. The optics, detection, signal processing, and decoding are also described.