All four papers examine the role of internal factors in planning
and learning from shopping. From the pre-purchase planning
perspective, based on a dataset covering over 18,000 grocery store
purchases in 58 categories, the Bell/Corsten/Knox paper demonstrates
that both traditional demographics and other shopper “habitrelated
traits” such as “enjoyment of shopping” and “information
gathering styles” affect unplanned buying. Based on a field study
wherein respondents used a handheld scanner to record the order of
purchases, the Stilley/Inman/Wakefield paper indicates that consumers
have a mental budget that allocates some amount of money
to make unplanned purchases on a specific grocery shopping trip.
From the post-purchase learning perspective, in two simulated
online shopping experiments, Huang and Hutchinson examine
planning as a metacognitive process and show that previous planning
experience increases consumers’ awareness of the need to plan
and forces them to think more strategically. As a result, individuals
successfully transfer their planning skill from one shopping context
to a new one. Finally, based on the results of a series of two-stage
shopping experiments, the Chang/Cho/Lee paper demonstrates that
consumers often seek out information about prior irreversible
purchases they have made and this information search behavior can
be explained by shopper characteristics. Particularly, cognitivelyoriented
consumers tend to avoid uncertainty and engage in postpurchase
information search to confirm that they have indeed made
the right purchase decision, whereas experientially-oriented consumers
engage in such behavior for emotion enhancement purposes.