How shopping cart handle designs affect purchasing - photos

[Altair]

How shopping cart handle designs affect purchasing.






More:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...22429211061367


Previously:

Shopping cart escalator - GIF
Anti-COVID shopping cart grip - photo
Shopping cart disinfection gate - photo
Shopping cart chairs - photos
Giant motorized shopping cart - GIF

[Jon]

Fascinating and disturbing. They propose that shopping carts with parallel handles activate the flexor muscles, which in turn increases purchasing, both in regard to quantity purchased of each item, and to total purchase value.

Why? Arm flexion (bringing objects or foods closer to the body) is more positively associated than arm extension (extending the arms away from the body to reject objects or foods). The standard overhand grip on a shopping cart handle predisposes you to a "pushaway" muscle orientation, which decreases purchase activity.

This research demonstrates that the physical properties of shopping carts influence purchasing and spending. Prior research on ergonomics indicates that standard shopping carts, which are pushed via a horizontal handlebar, are likely to activate arm extensor muscles. Prior research on arm muscle activation, in turn, suggests that arm extensor activation may elicit less purchasing than arm flexor activation. The authors thus deduce that standard shopping carts may be suboptimal for stimulating purchases. The authors predicted that shopping carts with parallel handles (such as on a wheelbarrow or “walker”) would instead activate the flexor muscles and thus increase purchasing. An electromyography study revealed that both horizontal and vertical handles more strongly activate the extensor muscles of the upper arm (triceps), whereas parallel handles more strongly activate the flexor muscles (biceps). In a field experiment, parallel-handle shopping carts significantly and substantially increased sales across a broad range of categories, including both vice and virtue products. Finally, in a simulated shopping experiment, parallel handles increased purchasing and spending beyond both horizontal and vertical handles. These results were not attributable to the novelty of the shopping cart itself, participants’ mood, or purely ergonomic factors.

[Frank S]

Comment not worth printing

[Floradawg]

Sounds like hogwash.

[mklotz]

Sounds like hogwash.

Thesis studies like these are how people who can't operate a can opener get doctorates at diploma mill, for profit universities.

[neilbourjaily]

I'd say there is probably less influence on shoppers who write a list.