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Chewing may influence consumers to spend more time browsing in stores: study

New research by Ted Rogers School of Retail Management finds customers chewing gum while shopping tend to shop longer, purchase more items
Category:RESEARCH RELEASE
March 20, 2017

Attention retailers: the next time a customer enters your store, try offering them a stick of gum after you greet them. New research from Ted Rogers School of Retail Management found that the act of chewing may encourage consumers to spend more time browsing in a store and thinking about what to buy.

“Retailers have been trying to influence consumer behavior for years now, through music, different scents or colours,” said Ksenia Sergueeva, a graduate student in Ted Rogers School of Management’s Master of Science in Management program, and co-author of the study. “They have also experimented with in-store sampling to see if that persuades people to spend more time in a store, giving them a chance to familiarize themselves with different products.”

 “The motivation behind this study was to try to understand what products you can give to subtly influence their behavior in a store,” said retail professor Seung Hwan (Mark) Lee, the other author of the study. “We also know from previous research that the act of chewing leads to more thinking, increases attention and reduces stress levels. What we wanted to do was to bring that chewing effect into the retail environment to see if it has the same impact.”

The researchers conducted five separate studies to examine how chewing can influence consumers’ thoughts and how they behave in a retail environment.

The first four studies were conducted in a lab with 300 students at a U.S. university, mostly comparing those who were given gum to chew versus those who didn’t. The participants were asked to perform variety of tasks, from imagining they were buying a book from an online retailer and viewing a retail format of an airport, to spending $100 on Amazon.com to buy gifts for three of their close friends/family. They were then asked to write down their thoughts about the purchases or list the number of items they looked at before they made their fictitious purchase. In all of the studies, the researchers found those who were chewing something (a piece of gum or chewable candy) spent more time coming up with more thoughts and browsed more items.

The researchers also found that if the participants were chewing too much gum, or if the task was too complicated, they weren’t able to concentrate on their task which lessened the benefits of chewing on cognitive behavior (more thoughts and more browsing).

In the final study, the researchers surveyed 56 customers at a major grocery store chain in Toronto. Half of the group were given gum to chew while the other half received nothing. Before the customers entered the store, they were given a survey asking them how long they intended to shop, how much they were going to spend and how many items they were going to buy. The researchers followed up with the same two groups as they exited the store. They found that those who were chewing gum spent more time and bought more items. They didn’t, however, spend more money than the non-chewing group.

“In the final study, we found that when people are chewing gum while they were shopping, the act of chewing led consumers to spend more time and buy more items than what they originally intended to do,” said Lee.

For retailers, the researchers suggest they should try offering gum as a sample to consumers, targeting those who seem to have the time to browse and are not being distracted by other friends or family members.  “The motivation of the retailers in this gum sampling scenario would be to encourage shoppers to spend more time browsing and thinking more about the their products,” said Lee.

The study, published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services (external link) , was funded by Ted Rogers School of Management and the College of Business, Colorado State University.

To download the study, click here: http://bit.ly/2mtnyN8 (external link) 

Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University (TRSM) is developing collaborative, creative leaders who will drive 21st century business forward while making a positive impact on society. https://www.torontomu.ca/tedrogersschool

A young man and woman standing in the middle of the Yonge and dundas intersection in front of the Adidas store on the corner
New research by retail researchers Professor Mark Lee and graduate student Ksenia Sergueeva found people who chew gum tend to shop longer in stores and browse more items.

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