University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Office of Research, College of Commerce and Business Administration
430 Commerce West , 1206 South Sixth Street
Champaign, Illinois 61820
For immediate release, March 19, 1998
For more information contact:
Brian Wansink, (217) 244-0208; [email protected]
http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~Wansink/index.html
Supermarket Displays that Doubled Sales ìThree bags of chips for $3.00î ìLimit twelve cans of soup per personî ìBuy six candy bars for Saturdayî
These numerical displays nearly doubled how much the typical grocery shopper would otherwise buy of that item, according to a study conducted at the University of Illinois.
Shoppers buy more if they see a numerical display, that is, a display that mentions a specific purchase quantity number. This was determined by varying the displays of 21 products in 89 grocery stores in Chicago, Philadelphia, and Iowa. The study was conducted by Brian Wansink, Robert Kent, and Stephen Hoch and was published in FebruaryÃs Journal of Marketing Research.
ìWhen a display suggests a specific number, it can upwardly bias how much a person buys,î explains Brian Wansink, a marketing professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For instance, when shoppers in Sioux City, Iowa, saw a grocery display that advertised canned soup as ì79¢ ó No Limit per Person,î they typically bought three or four cans. When the display was changed to read ì79¢ ó Limit Twelve per Person,î they purchased twice as manyóseven cans per person.
Similarly, displays that use multiple unit pricing and promote products as being ìThree for $3.00î instead of ìOne for $1.00î increased average sales by over 30 per cent for twelve of thirteen product categories. What is particularly interesting, noted Wansink, is that products may not even need to be on sale to be influenced by anchors. For example, a suggestive selling display, ìBuy eighteen candy bars for your freezer,î may not have sold eighteen candy bars to each person, but it did increase purchases from one candy bar per person to nearly three.
Studies have shown that numerical displays influence almost everyoneóincluding math professors, physicians, and U.S. Senators. But instead of showing shoppers to be irrational, Wansink contends these results suggest shoppers are sensible enough to not over-deliberate every small purchase decision they make. ìTake soup. People can either buy four cans each month or one can each week. The number a person buys is not that important because he or she would eventually buy it and eat it anyway.î
Nevertheless, if a consumer wants to be certain not to over-purchase, there is hope. A final study showed that when consumers write purchase quantity numbers next to items on a shopping list, they were not influenced by numerical displays.
More information is available at http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/~Wansink/index.html.
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