A Behavioral Approach for Comparing Supermarket Brands in Individual Decision Making

This paper investigates individual preferences for different supermarket brands using people’s willingness to travel as a proxy for their strength of preference. A survey is designed ad hoc to study the ratings of participants for the biggest two supermarket chains—Albert Heijn and Jumbo, on price, store image, promotion, own brands and status quo bias, using 7-point Likert Scales. These ratings were used to understand what contributes to people’s preference for a certain supermarket brand. Results show that the determinants for supermarket brand preference and for maximum biking distance to the preferred supermarket, given that another chain store is right within reach, are not the same. Moreover, people who prefer a particular supermarket brand are not necessarily willing to spend more time to go there, which is different from what classical economics theory predict