The inter-store mobility of supermarket shoppers

The allegiance of a particular customer, and the distribution across customers of strength of affiliation to a store are important indicators of store health. It is therefore important to understand the extent and determinants of shopper mobility among competing retailers. While shoppers often patronize many stores, they typically have a primary affiliation to a “main store” that captures the majority of their purchases. We examine, in detail, the tendencies of shoppers to transition away from the current main store and adopt another in its place. That is, rather than study all types of store switching behavior, we focus on the decision to change primary allegiance. The model is established in a discrete time hazard framework and estimated as random-effects probit. Data from 548 households taking 88,945 shopping trips among five stores are used to calibrate the model.We find that state dependence is prevalent with nearly three quarters of the shoppers showing progressive attachment to their current main store. Interestingly, this finding is not simply driven by location (i.e., because shoppers are captive to a single store based on geographical distance). More likely, shoppers are unwilling to give up the benefits of store-specific knowledge of assortment, layout and prices. Second, the decision to transition from a current main store is not influenced by temporary price promotions on a common basket of items: Shoppers will cherry-pick, but this alone does not cause them to change primary allegiance. The majority of transitions occur across competing stores of the same price format, which suggests “format loyalty” is an important aspect of shopper behavior. After controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, we find little relationship between observable demographics and the transition probability. We do, however, find that shoppers who spend more per trip are less likely to change main stores, as are less frequent shoppers. Implications for retail management strategy are discussed.     

Usage and understanding of food labels among Lebanese shoppers

Food labelling is a population‐based approach to health education that enables consumers to make better choices by providing information at the point of purchase. This study aimed to assess the food label usage and understanding and factors affecting them among Lebanese supermarket shoppers. A cross‐sectional study was conducted among 748 supermarket shoppers in Lebanon between December 2013 and February 2014 using a pre‐coded structured questionnaire. About 29.3 of the shoppers check the food labels every time they buy a food product and 15.7% never do it. Shoppers who do not read food labels identified the long time needed in reading them as top reason (34.9%), while 9.8% answered that they do not understand them. About 55.4%of the surveyed shoppers read the food labels at the supermarkets. About 44.4% of participants agreed that reading food labels is very important, while 30.3% read the food labels depending on the purchased product. Then 19.4% of participants complained that food labels contain too much information and 13.8% claimed that food labels are difficult to understand. About 60.3% think that food labels have helped people in changing their eating habits, while health and nutrition claims affected the product selection among 59.8% of participants. The food label knowledge score average was 63.1%. Older, obese shoppers having kids, suffering from chronic illness or allergies, following a specific diet and residing in big cities scored significantly (p < .05) higher. The low knowledge score necessitates the nutrition education on how to read and use the food labels. Groceries would be the perfect place to reach out mass consumers.     

Shopper-Facing Retail Technology: A Retailer Adoption Decision Framework Incorporating Shopper Attitudes and Privacy Concerns

Continual innovation and new technology are critical in helping retailers’ create a sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, shopper-facing technology plays an important role in increasing revenues and decreasing costs. In this article, we briefly discuss some of the salient retail technologies over the recent past as well as technologies that are only beginning to gain traction. Additionally, we present a shopper-centric decision calculus that retailers can use when considering a new shopper-facing technology. We argue that new technologies provide value by either increasing revenue through (a) attracting new shoppers, (b) increasing share of volume from existing shoppers, or (c) extracting greater consumer surplus, or decreasing costs through offloading labor to shoppers. Importantly, our framework incorporates shoppers by considering their perceptions of the new technology and their resulting behavioral reactions. Specifically, we argue that shoppers update their perceptions of fairness, value, satisfaction, trust, commitment, and attitudinal loyalty and evaluate the potential intrusiveness of the technology on their personal privacy. These perceptions then mediate the effect of the technology on shopper behavioral reactions such as retail patronage intentions and WOM communication. We present preliminary support for our framework by examining consumers’ perceptions of several new retail technologies, as well as their behavioral intentions. The findings support our thesis that shopper perceptions of the retailer are affected by new shopper-facing technologies and that these reactions mediate behavioral intentions, which in turn drives the ROI of the new technology.     

Exploring Urban Consumers’ Attitudes and Intentions to Purchase Local Food in Chile

Although local food consumption is growing in importance, there remains a lack of research addressing local food consumption preferences in less developed countries. This article aims to examine the drivers of local food purchase intentions for Chilean consumers. A model of local food behavioral intention was developed from consumer behavior theory. The model was tested using structural equation modeling with data from Chilean shoppers located in Santiago (n = 283). The analysis revealed that Chilean consumers are willing to purchase local food based on their positive attitude toward buying local food and their feelings of connectedness with the environment, but not because they have a desire to support local businesses. These findings have implications for retailers, marketers, and food producers.     

Grocery Purchase Behaviour for National and Own-Label Brands

This study compares the shopping habits for national and ownlabel brands to establish if there are differences in personal characteristics and purchase behaviour between those who buy national brands and those who buy own-labels in the UK. While statistical research could quantify how British grocery shoppers felt about food brands, it usually cannot explain why shoppers had the opinions they did, hence this study. It is thus an investigation, through the eyes of grocery shoppers, to answer the ‘WHY’ questions. Two distinct markets were found to exist. These grocery shoppers differ in terms of socio-economic status, personal characteristics and shopping behaviour. The findings provide information useful to both retailing and manufacturing interests as retail marketing strategies are developed in the face of intensifying competition for shoppers' food expenditure in the market-place.     

Segmentation of Malaysian shoppers by store choice behaviour in their purchase of fresh meat and fresh produce

Differences in retail store choice behaviour are examined for the purchase of fresh meat and fresh fruit and vegetables in Malaysia. In purchasing fresh meat, cluster analysis identified two groups of respondents who purchased the majority of the fresh meat they consumed from either modern retail stores or the traditional market. However, with regard to the purchase of fresh fruit and vegetables, cluster analysis identified three groups of respondents (modern retail shoppers, transient shoppers and traditional market shoppers). Although the clusters were labelled using similar terms, several similarities and differences were identified in the respective clusters for each food item. The findings indicate that store choice preference was based on the food product that the consumer intended to purchase.     

Shoppers' Reactions to Supermarket Price Scanning and Shopper Price Marking

Supermarkets are starting to adopt price scanning checkouts. Other supermarkets, both scanner equipped and non-scanner equipped, are removing individual item prices. Although much has been written, especially in the retail trade press, about the advantages to retailers of scanner check-outs little attention has been paid to shopper reactions. This study sought to determine the attitudes and behavior of shoppers at scanner equiped supermarkets. Some user reactions to self-price marking of purchases was also determined.     

Multichannel Shopping Through Nontraditional Retail Formats: Variety-Seeking Behavior With Hedonic and Utilitarian Motivations

Understanding motivations of multichannel shoppers is critical for retailers, especially in terms of how retailers can best attract shoppers to and orient shoppers across different channel options. Our study thus seeks to understand multichannel shopping through nontraditional retail formats by studying the effects of shoppers' hedonic and utilitarian motives. We used the theory of variety-seeking behavior for conceptualization, and analyzed data from a large-scale U.S. consumer survey. Our findings suggest that both hedonic and utilitarian factors are important predictors of multichannel shopping. Hedonic motivations have more explanatory power for high-level multichannel shopping than for moderate-level multichannel shopping, as compared to non-multichannel shopping.     

Use and knowledge of food labels of shoppers in a city with a high proportion of heart disease

This study aimed to assess consumers’ use and understanding of food labelling and the improvements that they would like. Systematically selected supermarket shoppers were interviewed using a questionnaire. Data showed that the use of food labels was low. Among those who read food labels, at least occasionally, use‐by‐date was the most reported information looked at. Understanding of the content of five nutrients on a standard food label provided was poor. Although a high proportion of participants claimed to have no problem with the current format, those who had problems wanted food labels that were ‘bigger’, ‘highlighted’ or written in ‘plain English’. These results suggest that before improved food labels can have an impact on consumers’ food choice, strategies to encourage shoppers to read them are needed.     

Start‐up Motivations and Growth Intentions of Minority Nascent Entrepreneurs

Firm growth is widely considered to be a measure of success for entrepreneurial businesses. Data indicate that there are systematic differences between minority and nonminority‐owned firms with respect to growth. Black entrepreneurs are 50 percent more likely to engage in start‐up activities than white entrepreneurs, however, black‐owned firms are smaller and less profitable than their white‐owned counterparts. Following the effort–performance–outcome–logic of expectancy theory and using data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED), our paper investigates the differences between black and white entrepreneurs' motivations to start and intentions to grow a new venture. Findings indicate that there are significant differences in motivations between black and white entrepreneurs both in starting and in their intentions to grow the new venture. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Multi-sensory congruent cues in designing retail store atmosphere: Effects on shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior

This paper explores the effects of multi-sensory congruent cues om shoppers’ emotions and purchase behavior in designing retail store atmosphere. Prior research suggests atmospheric stimuli to contribute to establish an appealing atmosphere and studies have confirmed that shoppers react to different stimuli. However, extant studies have not examined how multi-sensory congruent cues added to a visually dominant store atmosphere might impact shopper emotions and purchase behavior. The findings demonstrate a positive effect of multi-sensory congruent cues on shoppers’ emotions, through valence, and purchase behavior, through time spent and purchase. It is evident that shoppers perceive multi-sensory cues, such as auditory and olfactory ones, to be more effective in a dominant visual store atmosphere compared to only adding new visual stimuli. For retailers, a visually dominant store atmosphere should be designed more in the direction of a multi-sensory atmosphere in offering shoppers more appealing experiences of the retail setting.     

Influence of demographics,psychographics, shopping orientation,mall shopping attitude and purchase patterns on mall patronage in India

Retail boom in India is generating considerable interest from within the country as well as abroad. This growth in retail has been fueled by the mushrooming of shopping malls across the country. Despite this very little is known about the characteristics of the Indian mall shoppers. Also of special interest is the behavior of heavy shoppers because regardless of the footfalls at the mall, if the money spent is low, the mall does not benefit. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to profile Indian mall consumers, identify characteristics differentiating the high rupee volume purchasers at the mall and to evolve a model that can help predict heavy rupee volume purchasers in a catchment.The results of this study, spanning eight cities of India and 3026 mall consumers, indicate that the heavy shoppers are significantly different from the other groups along multiple demographic and socio-economic variables, behavioral variables, attitude and shopping orientation. Additionally, the study contributes to literature by evolving a typology of shoppers. The model evolved using Discriminant Analysis was used to predict potential heavy and low rupee volume purchasers for a city of interest, where currently there are no malls.     

Do Mystery Shoppers Really Predict Customer Satisfaction and Sales Performance?

Mystery shopping (MS) is a widely used tool to monitor the quality of service and personal selling. In consultative retail settings, assessments of mystery shoppers are supposed to capture the most relevant aspects of salespeople’s service and sales behavior. Given the important conclusions drawn by managers from MS results, the standard assumption seems to be that assessments of mystery shoppers are strongly related to customer satisfaction and sales performance. However, surprisingly scant empirical evidence supports this assumption. We test the relationship between MS assessments and customer evaluations and sales performance with large-scale data from three service retail chains. Surprisingly, we do not find a substantial correlation. The results show that mystery shoppers are not good proxies for real customers. While MS assessments are not related to sales, our findings confirm the established correlation between customer satisfaction measurements and sales results.     

Gender-related wayfinding time of mall shoppers

The relative superiority of males over females with respect to wayfinding performance in real life is not clearly established in the literature. The present study aims at clarifying the issue in the specific case of wayfinding in shopping malls environment. An experimental study using actual shoppers in a mall showed that the relationship between gender and time necessary to find a store within a mall is mediated by both shopping values and the use of information sources. Compared to male shoppers, female shoppers were found to be more hedonist and use people as a source of information, which in turn was instrumental in reducing wayfinding time.     

从购物动机到商店选择:中国西北消费者的购物行为探索(英文)

虽然中国已经成为世界上最大的消费者市场,但是有关中国消费者的购物行为研究还没有广泛开展,特别是针对中国内地的购物人群而言。本研究探索的是中国西北消费者的购物经历。深度采访显示,那些被访者更多地展现出一种消费者角色,这种角色能够同时满足个人和社会地位需求的购物特征。除此之外,在选择零售商店(购物)时,商品、商店和服务标准也是重要的影响因素。本文为研究中国消费者的商店购买行为提供了参考文献资料,同时也为零售商拓展中国西北市场提供了非常有价值的观点。     

Farmers' Market consumers: a Scottish perspective

Farmers' Markets in Scotland have gradually developed since 1999 as an alternative retail outlet for consumers. Throughout the UK, shoppers have become increasingly concerned about the quality and safety of their food and as a result seek healthier, locally grown organic and non‐organic produce. Thus, the growth of Farmers' Markets is directly related to consumer demand for fresh foods, direct from source, with the high quality of products being a primary reason for shopping. Farmers' Markets are not only seen as a place to buy ‘good food’ but also as a means to express consumer values associated with food choices. Scottish Government efforts to revitalize rural economies through local enterprise initiatives is evidenced by funding the initial establishment of the Scottish Association of Farmers' Market (SAFM), formed in 2000 by market organizers to further their development. The benefits of fresh local produce for Scottish consumers, the revival of a sense of community and the concept of ‘new consumption spaces’ tied to locality means the rural economy benefits from the increase in activity and profits through direct sales. This research investigates consumption habits at farmers' markets through the use of attitudinal theories along with food behaviours and motivations for purchasing. The results demonstrate that a positive attitude is important but the influence of others and barriers are not. Consumers are particularly motivated towards resource conservation and there are distinct differences in attitude between urban and rural shoppers. This research provides a unique insight into the attitudes that influence and motivate Farmers' Market consumers in Scotland.     

Healthy Food: Determinants of Price Knowledge of Functional Dairy Products

Agri-food business pricing practices assume that consumers know about prices and that price is an impediment to healthy food purchase and consumption. The present article assesses functional dairy food shoppers’ price knowledge accuracy and its determinants. The data were gathered from 207 face-to-face interviews with shoppers at the point of sale and were analyzed with binary logistic regression testing a number of set hypotheses. Results show that healthy food price knowledge is higher than for conventional food but still low, and consumers tend to underestimate the price paid. Price knowledge accuracy increases with high purchase frequency, promotional products, hedonistic consumption, and for enhanced function products. Results provide a basis for higher sustainable pricing strategies. Consumers’ inability to distinguish misleading pricing strategies calls for regulators to ensure fair and ethical market practices, especially for healthy food.     

Color me moral: White and black product colors influence prosocial behaviors

There are “moral meanings” that people ascribe to objects in white and black colors. Namely, it seems that people have been conditioned to see objects in white color as potentially “morally good” and those in black color as potentially “bad.” In the current inquiry, we would therefore hypothesize that consumers see buying a product in white color as an act that is morally good and buying a product in black color as an act that is morally bad. If so, then, in accordance with the moral regulation theory, those who buy white‐colored products should feel licensed to behave less prosocially afterward, while those who buy black‐colored products should be more prosocial as they feel a need to compensate for their initial misconduct. We investigate such a hypothesis in six studies, examining prosociality after buying white‐ or black‐colored products. The results are consistent with our hypothesizing and highlight a moral credentials framework in particular in explaining why the effect occurs. Consequently, product colors do not only satisfy the diversity of consumer tastes but they also impact consumers’ prosocial behavior well‐beyond product choice and outside of retail domains.     

The nature of informal food bazaars: Empirical results for Urban Hanoi,Vietnam

This paper aims to study the interesting phenomenon of informal food markets in urban areas, which have been neglected in the past research. Based on an empirical study of consumer choice between informal and formal markets (markets built-up by street hawkers vs. government-planned markets), this paper provides a basis for understanding the nature of informal markets in the Vietnamese context. The results show that cheap price and convenience (proximity) are important in shaping the choice by consumers for informal markets for food, while close relationship with sellers or services provided by sellers are not. Shoppers with higher concern for freshness and safety of fresh food are more likely to shop at formal markets. Additionally, low-income shoppers are found significantly inclined toward informal markets, while higher-income shoppers tend to shop at formal markets. Therefore, these two types of market should be viewed as two marketplaces to serve two segments of consumer groups, rather than two markets competing for a share of the business.     

For Indian online shoppers,have saying and doing parted ways?

Grounded in the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and based on both perceptual as well as behavioral data, the study explores e‐service quality (e‐SQ) dimensions’ influence on merchandise value perception (MVP) and how these value perceptions, in turn, impact shopper loyalty intention, finally leading to word‐of‐mouth (WOM) and store patronization behavior. The model was tested for measurement and structural validity, mediation by MVP, and moderation by gender. Findings suggest that: (1) e‐SQ dimensions of efficiency and fulfillment have direct effect on MVP; (2) MVP is a key mediating variable facilitating “indirect‐only” mediation between e‐SQ dimensions and online shoppers’ loyalty intentions; (3) mediation by MVP is not moderated by gender; (4) strong association between shoppers’ loyalty intention and intention to spread positive WOM; and (5) “saying” and “doing” are incompatible because online shoppers’ loyalty intentions or WOM do not translate into store patronization behavior.