Vary Item Assortment to Fit Crisis Status

Researchers at Columbia University and University of British Columbia had study participants shop for candy in an area with either wide or narrow aisles. Those shopping among the narrow aisles chose a greater variety of candy bars and more unfamiliar brands. The same pattern of results was seen with supermarket shoppers. The researchers explain the findings by saying that when customers in Western cultures are shopping in tight quarters, they feel a loss of control, and that being able to select from a variety of items helps restore the balance.
     We might argue that variety seeking would instead decrease when consumers feel a loss of control. It seems people would seek choice familiarity to ease stress associated with unpredictability and they’d embrace social conformity to increase comfort derived from interpersonal relationships.
     A study at University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, and Wake Forest University concluded that the direction in which loss of control drives consumer variety seeking depends on a factor few might predict: Political orientation.
     The researchers saw this by considering a crisis with a substantially greater threat to control then narrow aisles in the candy section. They analyzed over 32 million transactions in 687 U.S. grocery stores occurring before and during the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
     As part of the study, the researchers also defined the political orientation of the county in which each of the grocery stores was located. The proportion of Republican votes in the year 2020 presidential election was used for this, with a high proportion defining a conservative county and a low proportion indicating a liberal county.
     The data analyses indicated that in normal circumstances, when there is no crisis, politically conservative shoppers seek more variety in grocery purchases than do politically liberal shoppers. Then during a crisis, conservatives’ drive for variety drops, while that of liberals climbs.
     Perhaps these patterns are explained by variations in how conservatives and liberals conceptualize change and social conformity. We do know that, overall, the brain structures of political conservatives and liberals differ in the distribution of gray matter.
     Whatever the explanation for their findings, though, the researchers note evidence that widespread environmental threats which affect consumer decision making are increasing in frequency, and so they recommend retailers prepare to fit each stores’ item assortment to the political orientation of the local community and the stage of any threats to shoppers’ personal control.

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