A study finds that customers can be pressured—and less likely to shop there again. Asking retail customers to make a charitable donation at checkout can be a great way to raise money for a cause. But stores should be careful how they ask—or they could end up losing customers. In a recent paper, researchers found that customers who are asked to give at checkout often feel pressured and self-conscious. Depending on just how uncomfortable they feel, they are less likely to shop at the store again and more likely to have a negative opinion of the retailer.
"Customers often don't feel happy about these campaigns and may object to the intrusion," says Ying Zou, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Adelaide Business School in Australia and one of the paper's co-authors. In their experiment, Zou and her co-authors asked 329 participants to imagine they were in a grocery store checking out, and the cashier asks if they want to donate to Unicef. Participants then answered a survey about the experience. On a scale of one to seven—from not much pressure to a lot of time pressure—the mean rating came in at 3.35.
After the initial test, the authors separated participants into two groups: those who scored above the mean for time pressure (167 participants), and those who scored below it (162). Overall, the more-pressured group came away with a worse impression of the retailer. On a seven-point scale, where higher meant a more positive view, the more-pressured group rated the store at 4.78, much lower than the others' 5.83. The more-pressured group also said they were less likely to buy from the store again—5.55 on a seven-point scale of likelihood, compared with 6.14 for the other participants. What's more, the people who felt more time pressure were more likely to question how altruistic the grocer really was. Better communication could ease the pressure on customers, Zou says.
Source: Wall Street Journal Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing