Consumer Shopping Behaviors and In-Store Expenditure Decisions

The authors study the effect that consumers’ adopted shopping patterns have on their responsiveness to pricing activity of retailers. Two important dimensions of shopping behavior — inclination to switch stores and preference for a particular retail price format (every day low price (EDLP) or promotional price (HILO)) are hypothesized to systematically affect the responsiveness of in-store expenditure decisions to changes in prices. In particular, store loyal households should be more responsive to changes in prices when deciding how much to buy in a given store. Similarly, the household shopping in a HILO format (where price variability is greater) should be more responsive. These hypotheses are developed and then tested using a joint model of store choice and in-store expenditure which accounts for potential interdependence between these decisions. The findings attest to the ability of consumers to exploit variation in the environment: When constrained on one dimension (e.g., by shopping in only one store), consumers exhibit flexibility on another (e.g., by adjusting expenditures in response to price changes). If afforded the opportunity to be flexible (e.g., through variable prices at a HILO store), consumers take advantage of this. These aspects of shopping behavior interact in a theoretically interesting, but counter-intuitive way: the expenditure decisions of HILO switching consumers turn out to be the least responsive to changes in prices at a particular store. These shoppers exploit advertised price differences and move among stores. This responsiveness in the store choice decision means they have less incentive to exhibit flexibility in their expenditure decisions at a given store. The authors present estimates from a series of models calibrated on a scanner panel data set which captures store choices and expenditure receipts, and find all hypotheses to be supported

Vampires in the village Žrnovo on the island of Korčula: following an archival document from the 18th century

Središnja tema rada usmjerena je na raščlambu spisa pohranjenog u Državnom arhivu u Mlecima (fond: Capi del Consiglio de’ Dieci: Lettere di Rettori e di altre cariche) koji se odnosi na događaj iz 1748. godine u korčulanskom selu Žrnovo, kada su mještani – vjerujući da su se pojavili vampiri – oskvrnuli nekoliko mjesnih grobova. U radu se podrobno iznose osnovni podaci iz spisa te rečeni događaj analizira u širem društvenom kontekstu i prate se lokalna vjerovanja.The main interest of this essay is the analysis of the document from the State Archive in Venice (file: Capi del Consiglio de’ Dieci: Lettere di Rettori e di altre cariche) which is connected with the episode from 1748 when the inhabitants of the village Žrnove on the island of Korčula in Croatia opened tombs on the local cemetery in the fear of the vampires treating. This essay try to show some social circumstances connected with this event as well as a local vernacular tradition concerning superstitions

Take Turns or March in Sync? The Impact of the National Brand Promotion Calendar on Manufacturer and Retailer Performance

Featured price cuts are a popular tool among brand-manufacturers and retailers. Yet, there is growing concern about the net sales and revenue gains from these promotions, as retailers and manufacturers may simply be subsidizing consumers that shop around. This notion has placed the (co-) occurrence of a brand’s promotions across retailers high on the promotion-planning agenda. This paper examines the mechanisms underlying out-of-phase vs. in-phase schedules, and empirically demonstrates their sales and revenue implications in four product categories, covering purchases of a national panel of households across eight years. Our results reveal that calendar effects primarily materialize in categories where the chosen retailer is driven by brand promotions. In those categories, alternating the timing of featured price cuts across chains substantially increases the manufacturer and retailers’ immediate sales lift. However, when it comes to net gains, striving for out-of-phase promotions – the dominant approach among chains – is not necessarily ‘best practice’: retailers see the revenue advantage diminish, and manufacturers may even earn less

A Two-State Model of Purchase Incidence and Brand Choice

The authors develop and test a probabilistic model of purchase incidence and brand choice for frequently purchased consumer products. The model incorporates two ways of shopping in a category. Shoppers who have planned their purchasing (made a decision before entering the store) do not process in-store information and show no response to point-of-purchase promotions. Consumers who have not planned their purchasing in a category (deciding at the point of purchase) may process in-store information and may be strongly influenced by promotions. The two modes of information processing are called decision states and are labelled , respectively. The two-state model is calibrated on IRI scanner purchase records for saltine crackers. The model yields a significantly better fit than a one-state nested logit model and provides new insights into the relationship between shopping behavior and consumer purchase response.brand choice, purchase incidence, nested logit, promotion, shopping behavior