From mornings to evenings: is there variation in shopping behaviour between different hours of the day?

The consumer movement preferences data have traditionally been collected through more or less subjective methods, such as panel interviews, camera tracking and in‐store observation. Modern technology makes it possible also to use more objective methods. In this paper different data‐collecting methods were compared. One method, wireless local area network (WLAN) was tested and used in identification purposes. The empirical data were collected from a large Do‐It‐Yourself store. The most popular departments and sections of the store were explored from the standpoint of different times of a day. The WLAN technology proved to be useful, reliable and objective. The empirical test results show that consumer behaviour varies depending on the time of the day.