The Influence of Smart Shopping Carts on the Healthier Food Choices of Young Consumers

Shopping carts can be designed to accommodate and integrate smart devices seamlessly within a retail setting, allowing for enhanced connectivity and functionality. Moreover, smart devices on a smart shopping cart can provide verbal motivating stimuli to enhance consumers’ purchasing of healthy food. A conjoint experiment was conducted to examine the potential influence of motivating stimuli on smart shopping carts to encourage healthier purchases among young consumers. The study involved 91 participants and presented them with a hypothetical purchasing task related to buying frozen pizza. The findings indicate a positive impact associated with all stimuli originating from the smart shopping cart, with three focused explicitly on health-related aspects. Our results suggest that the presentation of real-time, dynamic, and personalized data through smart technology within a physical grocery retail setting holds the potential to surpass the effectiveness of traditional firm-based and static brand statements. Our study made young customers more likely to select a healthier frozen pizza. This finding supports the market positioning and customer-service focus of many retailers and brands today. It shows how verbal stimuli on smart shopping carts can serve as motivating augmentals on young adult consumers’ purchases of healthier foods. The managerial implications for grocery retailers contributing positively to their customers’ overall well-being and life satisfaction are discussed, as well as limitations and future studies. The article can be found here.

The Impact of Smart Fitting Rooms on Customer Experience in Fashion Retail

Smart fitting rooms are an innovative technology in fashion retail that leverages Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as computer vision, sensors, augmented reality (AR), and other tools to provide an engaging and tailored shopping experience. The present study investigates how smart fitting rooms might enhance customer experience in fashion retailing. A conjoint experiment (n=122) showed that a smart fitting room is an effective retail technology for enhancing the customer experience. The results show that personalized recommendations, personalized offers, and retailers’ sustainability labels have a relatively high impact on customer experience when buying fashion products. Providing relevant information, using visualizations that complement the real world, and making a comfortable environment in a smart fitting room enhances the customer experience. Moreover, our research has revealed that implementing smart fitting rooms by fashion retailers can lead to a less social shopping experience. The full research paper can be found in Procedia Computer Science.

Exploring the Use of Shopper-Facing Technology to Reduce Showrooming

The phenomenon of showrooming has given brick-and-mortar stores even greater challenges throughout the past decade of the growth in smartphone information technology. This study explores how smartphone technologies can be used to reduce showrooming. A conjoint experiment (n= 163) was conducted to examine factors like price, salesperson interference, and information search, and offers real-time data provided by in-store Internet of Things (IoT) technologies via a smartphone. Findings show that personalized offers with a scarcity message was the most impactful factor in the likelihood to buy, discouraging showrooming. This study reveals the relative impact of different attributes that can be provided on a shopper-facing smartphone application that provides real-time data using IoT technologies. Access to real-time information is important for showroomers to help encourage them to buy the product in-store rather than online. Offline retailers must use IoT technologies to enhance the consumer shopping journey and help support in-store purchases or purchase from the retailer’s online web shop. The full research paper can be found in Procedia Computer Science.

Big business returns on B Corp? Growing with green & lean as any label is a good label

This research contributes to knowledge on consumer-based food label equity (CBFLE) by examining a validity scale accuracy for predicting seafood purchasing choices in health and sustainability contexts.

Two studies were conducted for this research. Study 1, with 301 participants, show fish fillets with sustainability labels, such as B Corp, compared to those without labels. The study showedes that this type of food label did not impact a consumers purchase decision. Study 2, with 200 participants, found similar results when using health-labels, like the American Heart Association Heart-Check. The findings indicate how a consumers’ willingness to buy is influenced by the use of specific labels, within sustainability and health sectors. The full research paper can be found in the Journal of Business Research.

The relative impact of health communication conveyed via quick response codes: A conjoint experiment among young Thai consumers doing grocery shopping

This study examines how smartphone-based health communication, like QR codes, influences young Thai consumers to shop for healthier groceries. In a conjoint experiment with 214 participants, using QR codes to display health labels and high consumer ratings for food encouraged smartphone interaction and increased the likelihood of buying healthier groceries among young Thai consumers. Findings suggest health communication, like QR codes, can be a good investment for brands to increase healthier purchases. Read the full study in Health Marketing Quarterly.

Information, ingestion, and impulsivity: The impact of technology-enabled healthy food labels on online grocery shopping in impulsive and non-impulsive consumers

Unhealthy food consumption is a problem for society, companies, and consumers. This study explores how technology-enabled healthy food labels can impact food choice in an online grocery store context. We conceptualized unhealthy and healthy food choice as a matter of impulsivity problems. Three technology-enabled healthy food labels were derived based on variables that might impact self-control, and their influence on food choice was investigated.

In this study of 405 people, food labels that encouraged self-monitoring, pre-commitment, and social comparison impacted the consumers food choices. For the more impulsive easters, self-monitoring and pre-commitment proved to have a stronger effect. In comparison to non-impulsive eaters, which were more effected by social comparison. Overall, the findings suggest that self-monitoring of previous healthy food choices might be more effective than pre-commitment based on discounts on healthy food products, but these differences were minor. This paper is published at Frontiers in Nutrition.

Analyzing motivating functions of consumer behavior: Evidence from attention and neural responses to choices and consumption

Academia and businesses have shown an increased interest in neurophysiological methods, such as eye-tracking and electroencephalography (EEG), to understand consumer motivation. This research examines if these methods can predict the impact of motivation triggers, such as water deprivation, has on attention, brain response, choices, and consumption. Through experiments, results reveal that water deprived participants focused more on images of water and were more likely to choose and consume water. These findings suggest that neurophysiological methods can offer deeper insights into how motivational factors influence consumer behavior.

The full article can be found in at Frontiers in Psychology and it is also posted in the National Library of Medicine.

An Explorative Study on the Impact of Antecedent Mood States on Consumers’ Evaluation of Hotels Online

Many travelers plan their trip using online
booking platforms. These often have recommendations for
things to do and explore in the target destination. The
suggestions could have either positive or negative
connotations. This study aimed to investigate if such
recommendations can trigger certain mood states that
impact consumers’ evaluation of hotels online. Web-based
mood induction procedures were used to see whether moods
as antecedent states had any impact on consumers’
evaluations of hotel bookings. The results of the conjoint
analysis demonstrate that the impact of location and hotel
reviews can change based on consumers’ mood. The impact
of mood can help online managers in developing more
effective hotel marketing and advertising strategies. This paper is published at the IEEE International Engineering and Enginering Management (IEEM) conference 2021.

Call for Industrial PhD Fellowship in Omni-channel and Business Analytics

EUROSKO is looking for one outstanding candidate for a 4-year doctoral project in the industry in cooperation with Kristiania University College in the fields of Omnichannel/Business Analytics. The successful candidate is expected to start the appointment with EUROSKO autumn 2021. The candidate will be members of the Behavior & Technology Lab (BTLab) at Kristiania University College and will be expected to conduct research of high-quality level under the supervision of Prof. Asle Fagerstrøm.

Price consciousness as basis for Thai and Finnish young adults’ mobile shopping in retail stores

This short paper, published in Procedia Computer Science, explores the connection between price-conscious shopping habits and the use of smartphones for in-store shopping among young adults from Thailand and Finland. Through a cross-national survey, the study finds that price-conscious consumers are more likely to use mobile shopping in retail stores. Thai consumers had a stronger association to price consciousness and mobile shopping, than for Finnish consumers. These insights suggest that cultural factors can impact how a consumers mobile shopping behavior is influenced by their price awareness