Consumers Plan For Unplanned Purchases

Those unplanned grocery purchases may not be so unplanned after all. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, shoppers often expect to buy a certain number of unplanned items, and most have a pretty good idea of how much they’ll spend on them.

Those unplanned grocery purchases may not be so unplanned after all. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, shoppers often expect to buy a certain number of unplanned items, and most have a pretty good idea of how much they’ll spend on them.

Authors Karen M. Stilley, Jeffrey Inman (both University of Pittsburgh), and Kirk L. Wakefield (Baylor University) say that consumers have spending expectations for grocery shopping trips, called mental budgets, and those budgets typically leave room for unplanned purchases. The authors call this “in-store slack.”

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