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Changes in consumers" environment, specifically the economic crisis and the growing penetration of digital technologies, have produced significant changes in shopping habits, designed to gradually reduced the effectiveness of in-store marketing levers in influencing shopping behaviour. On one hand, due to the global economic downturn and the associated diminished disposable income, more shoppers are now searching more information before entering a store and evaluating more alternatives before to decide where and what to shop. On the other hand, the deep penetration of technological developments, such as digital media and mobile devices, among the population, has opened up new opportunities to influence shopper attitudes and behaviour in the retail environment. A new scenario seems to be opening up where more planning and preparation for shopping is carried out before customers entering the store. In this new environment, to formulate and execute effective shopper marketing strategies, managers need to better understand the complete picture of how online, offline, mobile and in-store marketing influence shoppers in the path-to-purchase-and-beyond cycle. Starting from recent research avenues, our work intends to explore the relationship between pre-shopping behaviour and shopping behaviour in-store, with the aim to understand how pre-trip activities have influenced shopping behaviour in-store. In order to get this purpose, we conducted a survey in three stores belonging to a leading Italian grocery retailer. Shoppers were intercepted in front of the display, when the chosen product was placed in the shopping cart. Through a structured questionnaire, respondents were asked about the nature of the purchase (planned vs unplanned) and the degree of out-of-store preparation (number and type of activity carried out). Data were processed using SPSS statistical software. The degree of grocery shopping preparation is found to influence shopper behaviour inside the store in terms of planned/impulse buying: the higher is the degree of preparation, the greater is the tendency to plan purchases and the lower is the tendency to make impulse purchases. Our findings could suggest retailers and manufacturers new ways to innovate the practice of shopper marketing, considering that marketing levers cannot still affect consumers" decisions in-store as in the past.

The present work aims to implement a "healthy checkout" in a real retailing environment in order to demonstrate that this kind of intervention can be a win-win strategy for both shoppers and retailers in a long-term perspective. A field experiment has been conducted in five stores belonging to a leading Italian Retailer in the north of Italy, where all the unhealthy products have been removed from the checkouts. Both sales analysis and shoppers attitudes towards the intervention have been studied. Sales data have been analyzed for the "healthy checkout stores" vs "traditional checkout stores", and customers have been interviewed at the end of the shopping trip five months after the implementation. Our findings show that developing a healthy checkout can have a positive impact on sales, retailer"s reputation in terms of perceived CSR, and loyalty to the store. The present work provides some interesting results about the long-term effect of an in-store marketing strategy that aims to promote health among customers.In order to fill those gaps, the present work is organized as follow. First, we describe the importance of the

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The present work aims to implement and test a ‘healthy checkout’ in a real retailing environment in order to explore the effectiveness of this kind of intervention in terms of helping customers making healthy choices on impulse, contrary to the claim of the extant literature. By developing this research, we want to enrich the extant literature by analyzing the nature of the behaviour in front of the checkout and the effect of in-store stimuli (specifically, assortment and communication) on that nature. For the purpose of the present work, all candies and chocolate at the checkout were replaced by a selection of healthy products. The assortment included a mix of fresh fruit, dried fruit, dried fruit bars, nuts and smoothies. A structured questionnaire was submitted at the end of the shopping trip to the sample considered in different stores in the north of Italy. Participants were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention (assortment and communication) and the effect of these levers on the nature of the behaviour was assessed. Our findings show that by placing healthy snacks at the checkout and by communicating them at a category level in an easy processable way it is possible to trigger healthy choices on impulse.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the importance of nutritional information in the selection of healthy food products and test the effects of different communication stimuli on people with different levels of self-control (NFC used as a proxy). Specifically, the authors posit that easy-to-process and intuitive nutritional information can lead to a substantial change in the shopping behaviour. Furthermore, this work wants to test the effect on behaviours, emotions and judgements of two different communication signs (stars and silhouettes) in the promotion of healthy food products inside grocery stores. Design/methodology/approach After the development of a new nutritional display, the authors identified two different communication stimuli (stars and silhouettes) in order to test their impact on emotions evoked, judgements and behaviours. First, a pre-test was conducted using neuro-marketing tools (Face Reader) to detect the emotions aroused by the communications and then a main online between-subjects experiment involving 222 participants was carried out to understand the impact on choices and attitudes. Data were analysed using SPSS. Findings Results showed that communication plays a key role in helping customers choosing healthier products. Concerning the different communication stimuli, the authors found a significant difference in the emotion evoked by the different signs used. This difference translates into a judgemental change but not necessarily into a behavioural one. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, previous researchers have focused their attention only on the nutritional values communicated at a product level through different product labels, while nobody has tried to implement and test a category/segment level communication strategy.

PurposeThe wide literature about healthy behaviours posits that a high level of self-control is required in order to make healthy choices. This work intends to demonstrate that retailers, through the management of in-store marketing levers, can influence shopping behaviour, no matter which is the individual tendency to engage in cognitive behaviours. For this specific purpose, we have considered participants' “Need for Cognition” as a proxy of self-control.Design/methodology/approachWith reference to a specific category (cookies), we created a new display based on benefits (healthy eating) rather than products' attributes. A pre-test was conducted before the main experiment in order to assess the potential ability of the new nutritional display to help customers selecting healthier products, by testing participants' awareness and comprehension of the stimuli proposed. Then, an online between-subjects experiment was conducted by simulating the shoppers' expedition in the cookies' aisle inside a store with the aim to demonstrate that healthy choices can be also made on impulse.FindingsOur findings showed that when both communication and visual cues are provided, people low in need for cognition (NFC) are more willing to select healthy products from the shelf, compared with people high in NFC.Originality/valueWhile there is a wide literature explaining the mechanisms supporting healthy choices, fewer are the contributions about the role of retailers in promoting healthy eating through in-store marketing levers. More important, there is no contribution about how to promote health among people with low level of self-control.

One of the most basic strategic decisions a retailer must take involves determining the product assortment to offer inside the store. Despite the importance of the topic, there are two opposite strands of literature that have come up with completely different points of view. To summarize them, the first one states that the more choices, the better, while the second one states that more choices lead to weaker preferences and lower levels of satisfaction. Furthermore, the majority of studies conducted so far have focused their attention on collecting self-report measures. However, it has been argued thet self-report measures, interviews and questionnaires may have strong biases. Specifically, they are a product of psychological, sociological, linguistic, experiential and contextual variables, which may have little to do with the construct of interest. Thus, the present work intends to enrich the extant literature about the effect of ‘choice overload’ on customer satisfaction and behavior inside the store by analyzing both cognitive and unconscious responses. In order to confirm our hypothesis, an experiment, involving 171 participants, was conducted in a laboratory supermarket in Milan to test the reactions in front of a regular pastry display and a display characterized by fewer options.