Author: Sanchit Pawar

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The relative importance of healthy food labels when shopping for groceries online

Healthy food labels are popular tools to encourage consumers to make healthier food choices. This study, published in Procedia Computer Science, explores how online grocery shopping decisions is influenced by healthy food labels. A conjoint study with 111 participants discovered that factors, such as price, brand and country of origin, had a stronger impact on purchase decisions than healthy food labels. Still, the presence of a healthy food label increased the likelihood of a product being selected. Results of the study also show gender differences, as healthy food labels had a stronger impact on female consumers. These findings present the opportunities to enhance the effectiveness of healthy food labels in influencing consumers food choices. It is evident that simply presenting healthy food labels on products is equally beneficial for consumers, manufacturers, and policymakers alike.

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Investigating the impact of Internet of Things services from a smartphone app on grocery shopping

This study investigates how Internet of Things (IoT) features in a grocery store’s smartphone app affect shopping behavior. In a simulated scenario, 226 participants used the app to purchase items, such as fresh salmon. The study found that IoT services like “updated expiry date”, “Aggregated national customer experience index” and “personalized offer based on product in the basket. increased engagement with the app and encouraged more purchases. The “real-time price” IoT feature had a mixed effect on user interaction. Analysis showed that certain IoT features can be a dealbreaker in a competitive grocery market. The study is published in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, presented at Forskning.no and Kristiania.no.

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Exploring customer online reviews for new product development: The case of identifying reinforcers in the cosmetic industry

This study analyzes online customer reviews to understand preferences for certain cosmetic products. The research explores the possibilities to strengthen relationship between customers and brands in the cosmetics industry. This is explored by using the marketing firm theory. Furthermore, the study analyze customer reviews by applying market research techniques. The reviews are analyzed with text analytics to identify key factors and reinforces that influence customer expectations and sentiments about cosmetic products. Findings suggest that certain product features appeal for all customers, while others vary by their age and skin tone. This shows the importance of having segment-specific insights. The study is published in Managerial and Decision Economics and presented in Kunnskapsmagasinet Kristiania.

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Call for papers: Internet of Things Applications in Healthcare: A Focus on Improving Patient Safety

Internet of Things Applications in Healthcare: A Focus on Improving Patient Safety: A special issue of Journal of Healthcare Engineering

Call for papers

This special issue seeks to attract original research articles that discuss emerging IoT technologies with regard to their impact on patient safety in healthcare. This special issue especially welcomes analytical, computational, experimental, and clinical research, state-of-the-art reviews, and conceptual and theoretical developments and designs.