The Interplay between Category Characteristics, Customer Characteristics, and Customer Activities on In-store Decision Making

We explore product category and customer characteristics that affect the likelihood of engaging in unplanned purchases. Additionally, we examine consumer activities that can exacerbate or limit these effects. We employ a hierarchical modeling approach to test our hypotheses using a dataset of in-store intercept interviews conducted with 2,300 consumers across 28 stores. The results show that category characteristics, such as purchase frequency and displays, and customer characteristics, such as household size and gender, affect in-store decision making. Moreover, while our analysis reveals that the baseline probability of an unplanned purchase is 46%, the contextual factors can drive this probability as high as 93%. The results support our predictions that list use, more frequent trips, limiting the aisles visited, limiting time spent in the store, and paying by cash are effective strategies for decreasing the likelihood of making unplanned purchases.