The Costco effect: Do consumers buy less variety at bigger stores?
2014-10-14
(Press-News.org) Do consumers make the same choices when products such as beer, soft drinks, or candy bars are sold individually or in bundles? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers purchase a greater variety of products when they are packaged individually rather than bundled together.
"When consumers choose multiple products, they are influenced by the mere mechanics of choosing, regardless of their product preference. Consumers are more likely to seek variety when choosing from single rather than bundled products," write authors Mauricio Mittelman (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella), Eduardo B. Andrade (Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Fundação Getúlio Vargas), Amitava Chattopadhyay (INSEAD, Singapore), and C. Miguel Brendl (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University).
In their experiments, the authors asked consumers to choose multiple items, either individually or from pre-arranged bundles. In one study, consumers selected two soft drinks (either Coke or Sprite). One group made two separate selections (first choosing one can and then the other) while another group chose from four bundled packages (Coke/Sprite, Sprite/Coke, Coke/Coke, Sprite/Sprite), making only one choice.
Results revealed that consumers seek variety more often when choosing items individually rather than from bundles. In the soft drink experiment, consumers who selected one can of soda followed by another were twice as likely to seek variety as those who simply chose from a bundled selection. Additionally, the authors found that these participants sought variety even when they admitted preferring one brand of soda more than the other brand.
These findings offer insight for large retailers such as Costco and Sam's Club as well as smaller companies trying to sell new products in smaller retail outlets. "By reducing variety, bundling can increase sales regardless of pricing since it induces consumers to buy larger quantities of the same item. Meanwhile, new competitors should find it easier to gain a foothold in smaller retail outlets. Consumers who shop at smaller stores are more likely to buy different products than consumers shopping in larger stores with bundled product offerings," the authors conclude.
INFORMATION:
Mauricio Mittelman, Eduardo B. Andrade, Amitava Chattopadhyay, and C. Miguel Brendl. "The Offer Framing Effect: Choosing Single Versus Bundled Offerings Affects Variety Seeking." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2014.
For more information, contact Mauricio Mittelman (mmittelman@utdt.edu) or visit http://ejcr.org/.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2014-10-14
DENVER (Oct. 14, 2014) – America's streets are designed and evaluated with a an inherent bias toward the needs of motor vehicles, ignoring those of bicyclists, pedestrians, and public transit users, according to a new study co-authored by Wesley Marshall of the University of Colorado Denver.
"The most common way to measure transportation performance is with the level-of-service standard," said Marshall, PhD, PE, assistant professor of civil engineering at the CU Denver College of Engineering and Applied Science, the top public research university in Denver. "But ...
2014-10-14
Every year rotavirus causes half a million diarrhoea-related deaths amongst children in developing countries. Existing vaccines provide poor protection. The reason could be a widespread genetic resistance amongst children, according to virologists at Linköping University.
Acute diarrhoeal illnesses cause nearly one-fifth of all child deaths in developing countries. The most common cause is rotavirus. Improved sanitation and hygiene have had a limited effect on the spread of the illness. Today, vaccination is considered the most important method for reducing mortality. ...
2014-10-14
Slow-healing or non-healing bone fractures in otherwise healthy people may be caused by gene variants that are common in the population, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
"We found associations between certain gene polymorphisms and delayed fracture healing in a sample of patients," said J. Spence Reid, professor of orthopaedics and rehabilitation. "Our study was preliminary but it demonstrated the feasibility of a larger one, which we're now working to set up."
The identification of gene variants that delay fracture healing could lead to screening ...
2014-10-14
The application of a new, precise way to turn genes on and off within cells, described online October 9, 2014 in two articles in the journal Cell, is likely to lead to a better understanding of diseases and possibly to new therapies, according to UC San Francisco scientists.
The key to the advance is a new invention, called the SunTag, a series of molecular hooks for hanging multiple copies of biologically active molecules onto a single protein scaffold used to target genes or other molecules. Compared to molecules assembled without these hooks, those incorporating the ...
2014-10-14
EAST LANSING, Mich. – The discovery of a cellular snooze button has allowed a team of Michigan State University scientists to potentially improve biofuel production and offer insight on the early stages of cancer.
The discovery that the protein CHT7 is a likely repressor of cellular quiescence, or resting state, is published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This cellular switch, which influences algae's growth and oil production, also wields control of cellular growth – and tumor growth – in humans.
Christoph ...
2014-10-14
A program that provides guidance to primary care physicians about appropriately prescribing antibiotics for children is effective, but its improvements wear off after regular auditing and feedback are discontinued.
"Our findings suggest that interventions with outpatient healthcare providers should include continued feedback to clinicians to remain effective," said study leader Jeffrey S. Gerber, M.D., Ph.D., an infectious diseases specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
Gerber and colleagues from CHOP published their research online Oct. 10 in ...
2014-10-14
LAWRENCE — Few people devote time to pondering the ancient origins of the eel-like lamprey, yet the evolutionary saga of the bloodsucker holds essential clues to the biological roots of humanity.
Today, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a description of fossilized lamprey larvae that date back to the Lower Cretaceous — at least 65 million years ago.
They're the oldest identified fossils displaying the creature in stages of pre-metamorphosis and metamorphosis.
"Among animals with backbones, everything, including us, evolved from ...
2014-10-14
DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have known for decades that stress contributes to heart disease. But a new analysis by researchers at Duke Medicine shows mental stress may tax women's hearts more than men's.
The research appears online Oct. 13, 2014, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"Normally when under stress, we fight back or run away. In order to do that, we need to pump more blood to the body," said Wei Jiang, M.D., the study's senior author and professor of medicine, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. ...
2014-10-14
Washington D.C., October 14, 2014 -- Even as the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has enshrined light emitting diodes (LEDs) as the single most significant and disruptive energy-efficient lighting solution of today, scientists around the world continue unabated to search for the even-better-bulbs of tomorrow.
Enter carbon electronics.
Electronics based on carbon, especially carbon nanotubes (CNTs), are emerging as successors to silicon for making semiconductor materials. And they may enable a new generation of brighter, low-power, low-cost lighting devices that could challenge ...
2014-10-14
In the first study to look at would-be diseases carried by New York City rats, scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health identified bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, Salmonella, and C. difficile, that cause mild to life-threatening gastroenteritis in people; Seoul hantavirus, which causes Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever and kidney failure in humans; and the closest relative to human hepatitis C. Results appear in the journal mBio.
The researchers trapped 133 Norway rats at 5 sites in New York City, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] The Costco effect: Do consumers buy less variety at bigger stores?
