Buyer Beware: Shopping Can Lead to More … Well … Shopping
Posted by Universal Ad at Sunday, September 23, 2007 10:21 AM and is filed under Research,Retail,Shopping,Consumers,Marketing 
Academic research done by a team from Stanford, Yale and Duke universities and published in the Journal of Marketing Research in August under the title "The Shopping Momentum Effect,” shows that
for most people buying that fateful first––and often innocent––item seems to open
the purchasing floodgates.
The first shopping stage (during which consumers deliberate about a purchase, weighing cost and benefits, etc.) is followed by the buying phase, where a subtle psychological mechanism comes into play and people "go from thinking from their mind to thinking from their cart" and a “shopping momentum" is created.
Two main takeaways for retail marketers:
Posted by Universal Ad
The first shopping stage (during which consumers deliberate about a purchase, weighing cost and benefits, etc.) is followed by the buying phase, where a subtle psychological mechanism comes into play and people "go from thinking from their mind to thinking from their cart" and a “shopping momentum" is created.
Two main takeaways for retail marketers:
- Necessities are the best drivers
of customers’ shopping momentum so put momentum starters which don’t require a
lot of deliberation at the front of the store (for example, like newspapers and
umbrellas in the rainy season) and place the more guilt-inducing (luxury or
luxury-related) items towards the back.
- Reduce customer deliberation points by having fewer checkout stands available and aim to consolidate the point of sale into one final counter. For example, department store layouts, where each section has its own register, may, in fact, be discouraging sales because they encourage people to think about their purchases each time they have to open their purse.
Posted by Universal Ad
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