Circulate Item Names to Fit Circadian Rhythm

It makes sense, right off, that consumables known to be infused heavily with caffeine are more likely to be purchased mornings rather than evenings. Stretch that assumption and you’ll understand the finding from UNSW and Queensland University of Technology that items with energy-infused names sell better earlier in the day. Mellow-named products show the reverse trend.
     In tracking a total of more than 8,000 transactions collected during a period of more than 160 consecutive days at a United Kingdom bakery, this held true for Mighty Protein Meal or Hearty & Seasonal on the one hand and Ella’s Kitchen Pouches or Victorian Sponge on the other. Moreover, a fine-grained analysis of the data showed how the timeline shapes changed over the days because of the seasonal shifts in sunrise and sunset. Note that the correlations held true for the energy association with the item name, not necessarily the energizing power of item ingredients.
     These are trends and so general tendencies. University students during finals week and workers recently shifting to the graveyard shift might reserve those caffeine-infused items for nighttime. We’d expect the same sorts of exceptions with preferences for the energy-infused item names. Still, the researchers suggest retailers circulate in-store marketing of items over the period of the day to fit the typical sleep-wake cycle, the circadian rhythm.
     Your shoppers’ degree of wakefulness has other implications, too. Sleepy shoppers favor variety and novelty. Researchers at University of British Columbia, University of Hong Kong, and Tsinghua University say this finding is counterintuitive. You’d expect sleepyheads to want to simplify decision tasks so they could start napping. The narrower the portfolio to filter, the better, so you’d think. But it turns out that, instead, because consumers often consider their shopping to be necessary, they hanker for enough variety to stimulate themselves into wakefulness. Along with this, people make riskier decisions when they’re sleepy, and having more alternatives available increases the feeling of risk.
     Also attend to other cyclical influences. Annual weather changes are somewhat predictable, and they affect large segments of your customers the same way. Market to take account of them. In February, you can pretty much count on everybody being cold if they go outside when your store is in Buffalo, New York and quite warm when outside a store in Adelaide, South Australia. Stock more stay-at-home and go-out-protected items at one time of year than at the others.

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