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The Effect of In-Store Travel Distance on Unplanned Spending: Applications to Mobile Promotion Strategies

Typically, shoppers’ paths only cover less than half of the areas in a grocery store. Given that shoppers often use physical products in the store as external memory cues, encouraging shoppers to travel more of the store may increase unplanned spending. Estimating the direct effect of in-store travel distance on unplanned spending, however, is complicated by the difficulty of collecting in-store path data and the endogeneity of in-store travel distance. To address both issues, the authors collect a novel data set using in-store radio frequency identification tracking and develop an instrumental variable approach to account for endogeneity. Their analysis reveals that the elasticity of unplanned spending on travel distance is 57% higher than the uncorrected ordinary least squares estimate. Simulations based on the authors’ estimates suggest that strategically promoting three product categories through mobile promotion could increase unplanned spending by 16.1%, compared with the estimated effect of a benchmark strategy based on relocating three destination categories (7.2%). Furthermore, the authors conduct a field experiment to assess the effectiveness of mobile promotions and find that a coupon that required shoppers to travel farther from their planned path resulted in a substantial increase in unplanned spending ($21.29) over a coupon for an unplanned category near their planned path ($13.83). The results suggest that targeted mobile promotions aimed at increasing in-store path length can increase unplanned spending.