Demonstrate It's Great!: A thesis about the possibility to influence consumers through in-store demonstrations

Abstract: In grocery stores today consumers are confronted with endless possibilities and most purchase decisions are made while in the store. This situation provides retailers with a perfect opportunity to influence consumers’ purchase decisions. One of the tools to affect consumers is in-store demonstrations. This thesis has studied the effect of degree of purchase planning on the result of in-store demonstrations and the effects of in-store demonstrations on sales and brand attitude, in cooperation with Retail House, Arla Foods and ICA Kvantum. A natural experiment in an authentic grocery store environment was conducted in twelve stores throughout Sweden and two products of the same brand were demonstrated; one typical weekday product, Yoghurt and one typical weekend product, Sauce. The experiment was conducted according to a Latin Square design and was carried out during a two-week period. The data collected consisted of 1,316 questionnaires collected from consumers inside the stores and six weeks sales data from the participating stores. The results show that demonstrations do increase sales and brand attitude significantly. Although, the impact varies between different days of the week, different types of consumers and different products. It was also shown that there is a trade-off between an increase in sales versus an increase in brand attitude, which may have different implications for different actors within the retail setting. The results of the study provide new knowledge regarding retail marketing, a research area that is still relatively unexplored.