Should shopping carts be more like wheelbarrows? [marketing study]

Supermarket shopping carts (trolleys) tend to have horizontal handles – would people buy more things if the handles were parallel – like a wheelbarrow? New research from City University of London and the University of Innsbruck suggest that the answer could be ‘yes’. In an experimental study : “supermarket shoppers purchased more products and spent […]

How waiting in line is like war

A defense researcher analyzes (1) customer satisfaction in a shopping scenario and (2) the efficient use of warplanes in battle. He comes up with a mathematical model common to both—in which “[the] parameter of principal interest is the expected customer-survival rate.”  Here’s his paper on how the two relate: “Queuing with Impatient Customers and Indifferent Clerks,” […]

To Predict Home-Based Shopping Trips, Fuzzily

Of all the fuzzy intervening opportunity models, this one is most explicitly designed to predict home-based shopping trips: “A fuzzy intervening opportunity model to predict home-based shopping trips.” Shahriar Afandizadeh [pictured here], Seyed Mehdi Yadi Hamedani, Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, 2012, 39:(2), 203-222,  The authors are at the School of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science […]

The uncomfortable beauty of shopping

New research about shopping: “Match-Up Revisited: The Effect of Staff Attractiveness on Purchase Intentions in Younger Adult Females: Social Comparative and Product Relevance Effects,” Journal of International Business and Economics, Bianca E. Price and Duncan W. Murray, vol. 9, no. 2, 2009, pp. 55-76.   The researchers are at the University of South Australia. University World […]