The Online Store Experiment
We designed an online grocery store to study household shopping behavior for a period of 5 weeks between September 11 and October 13, 2006. The shopping environment was as close as possible to any functioning store, and all price change conditions were controlled within the range of outside store price changes. In our online store, shoppers made actual purchases by spending real money. We collected detailed information about the participants’ plans for purchases, price expectations, and purchase behaviors.