To try to understand the habits and emotions of American shoppers, we investigated the behavior of the average American consumer using data collected via our USA TouchPoints syndicated data panel.
Weekly Shopping Patterns
The first thing we looked at was popular shopping times through the week in order to establish when consumers are most receptive to advertising.
This chart shows the distribution of time spent shopping by US consumers on each weekday.
Respondents reported that they were shopping more frequently on Fridays and Saturdays, with Saturday having 22% of all time spent shopping! That’s 6% more than the daily average! Consumer activity remained fairly constant from Sunday through to Thursday.
Shopping Patterns Throughout The Day
Shopping activity typically begins at around 10am and peaks between 12:30pm and 1:30pm. People buying their lunch ‘on-the-go’ inflate the proportion of people shopping at this time causing this peak.
This chart shows the distribution of time spent shopping by US consumers on each half hour of the day.
Shopping Emotions
We humans are complex beings with a wide range of emotions affecting the way we behave in our everyday lives. With this in mind we decided to investigate the emotions that our panel of American respondents experienced when shopping.
This chart displays the range of emotions that the shoppers of our panel experienced over a 10 day period
Shopping makes you happy ?
Overall, shoppers are a positive bunch of people! Contentment, happiness and confidence were regularly experienced emotions.
Negative emotions were not reported as often as positive ones but they were still experienced by our panel. The most frequently reported negative emotions were exhaustion and frustration. Of course, exhaustion is often linked to time of day but frustration is likely to be induced by an activity – in this case, shopping!
Over the course of the day these emotions remained fairly constant – The biggest fluctuations in mood were seen with boredom and loneliness. These two emotions have been plotted over the course of a day.
We see peaks at 12:30pm and 5pm when these emotions are at their highest. The 12:30 peak could be down to people shopping on their own at lunch breaks, driving these emotions.
Impact of Age on Emotion
So how do emotions in shoppers vary with age? Exhaustion ranked higher in 18-44 year olds than respondents aged 45 and over, indicating that consumers over 45 may be more alert and possibly more receptive to advertising when out shopping than younger consumers.
Interest and hope generally increase with age, with the exception of 40-54 year olds. 35-39 year olds have the lowest proportion of confidence when shopping.
When out shopping, advertising and media exposure can help to secure consumer decisions and initiate impulse buys. Advertisers have the ability to target consumers more effectively through looking at the correlation between the time of day and the mood of shoppers.
*Analysis based on research carried out amongst 1029 panellists from around the U.S.A, between January 28th and February 20th. RealityMine used USA TouchPoints collected data to conduct this study.
