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What Do You Buy When No One’s Watching? The Effect of Self-Service Checkouts on the Composition of Sales in Retail

Author

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  • Olden, Andreas

    (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics)

Abstract

Buying items that are unhealthy or are of a private nature may carry a stigma and cause embarrassment. I analyze whether the anonymity provided by self-service checkouts changes customers' shopping patterns in grocery stores. I look at a natural experiment where two stores in a grocery-chain implement self-service checkouts. Using a triple difference estimator, comparing the sales of stigma items to the sales of mundane items and to the sales of a group of control stores, I find that the sales of stigma items increase by 10-15 percent. The increase comes from the product categories candy, chips, soda, ready-made food and alcohol. I find that the increase is caused by existing customers buying more, rather than from self-service checkouts changing the customer base. However, fully converting to self-service seems to scare away some customers and decreases overall sales.

Suggested Citation

  • Olden, Andreas, 2018. "What Do You Buy When No One’s Watching? The Effect of Self-Service Checkouts on the Composition of Sales in Retail," Discussion Papers 2018/3, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2018_003
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2490886
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ariely, Dan & Levav, Jonathan, 2000. "Sequential Choice in Group Settings: Taking the Road Less Traveled and Less Enjoyed," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(3), pages 279-290, December.
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    3. A. Colin Cameron & Douglas L. Miller, 2015. "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 317-372.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    5. Avi Goldfarb & Ryan C. McDevitt & Sampsa Samila & Brian S. Silverman, 2015. "The Effect of Social Interaction on Economic Transactions: Evidence from Changes in Two Retail Formats," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(12), pages 2963-2981, December.
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    Cited by:

    1. Cardinali, Rebecca & Lusher, Lester & Taylor, Rebecca & Villas-Boas, Sofia Berto, 2022. "Stigma Goods, Self-Checkout Adoption, and Changes in Purchasing Decisions," 2022 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Anaheim, California 322427, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt & Mats Köster & Matthias Sutter, 2019. "To Buy or not to Buy? Shrouding and Partitioning of Prices in an Online Shopping Field Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 7475, CESifo.
    3. Andreas Olden & Jarle Møen, 2022. "The triple difference estimator [Semiparametric difference-in-differences estimators]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(3), pages 531-553.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General
    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
    • M20 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - General

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