Decision Consortium Seminar

Peter Fader

Thursday, November 12, 2009, 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm
3048  EAST HALL
Sponsored By: Evolution & Human Adaptation Program & Decision Consortium

Event Information

Abstract: Path data, records of consumers’ movement over time, contain valuable information for marketing researchers because they describe how consumers interact with their environment and make choice. This talk will focus on the analysis of grocery shopping paths and purchase data, obtained using Radio Frequency Identification tags affixed to shopping carts. We summarize three separate research projects, each of which studies paths using a different approach. In the first paper, we develop a unifying framework that allows us to better understand similarities and differences across path-related areas in marketing (e.g., web-browsing data, eye-tracking studies, and “information acceleration” tasks) as well as other seemingly unrelated domains (e.g., movements of birds, pedestrians, and traffic). In the second paper, we develop an integrated model for store shopping trips to capture the relationship between consumers’ shopping paths through the store and their purchasing behavior. We calibrate our model using PathTracker® data from Sorensen Associates and discuss our empirical findings and managerial implications. In the third paper, we relate grocery shopping trips to the “Traveling Salesman Problem,” a classical paradigm in operations research. We calculate the optimal (shortest-distance) path for each grocery shopper and compare the observed paths with the optimal solution. We explore the relationship between shopper “efficiency” and purchase behavior (e.g., do inefficient shoppers buy more or less?). Finally, we discuss other avenues for research in this broad area, both using the type of data we currently have available as well as future technologies that will make this kind of research even more productive and managerially relevant.

 

Background Readings:

 

Hui, Bradlow and Fader (in press). Testing behavioral hypotheses using an integrated model of grocery store shopping path and purchase behavior. Journal of Consumer Research.

 

Hui, Fader and Bradlow (2009a). Path data in marketing: An integrative framework and prospectus for model building. Marketing Science, 28(2) 320-335.

 

Hui, Fader and Bradlow TSP (2009b). The traveling salesman goes shopping: The systematic deviations of grocery paths from TSP optimality. Marketing Science, 28(3), 566-572.

For More Information

Email: mohrbach@umich.edu
Website URL: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~prestos/Consumption/