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Publications
Publications
  • July 2015
  • Article
  • Journal of Marketing

BYOB: How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself, and the Environment

By: Uma R. Karmarkar and Bryan Bollinger
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Abstract

As concerns about pollution and climate change have become more central in public discourse, shopping with reusable grocery bags has been strongly promoted as environmentally and socially conscious. In parallel, firms have joined policy makers in using a variety of initiatives to reduce the use of plastic bags. However, little is known about how these initiatives might alter consumers' in-store behavior. Using scanner panel data from a single California location of a major grocery chain, and completely controlling for consumer heterogeneity, we demonstrate that bringing your own bags simultaneously increases purchases of environmentally friendly as well as indulgent (hedonic) items. We use experimental methods to further demonstrate causality and to consider the effects of potential moderators. These findings have implications for decisions related to product pricing, placement and assortment, store layout, and the choice of strategies to increase the use of reusable bags.

Keywords

Grocery Shopping; Reusable Bags; Licensing; Priming; Goals; Hedonic; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Environmental Sustainability; Retail Industry

Citation

Karmarkar, Uma R., and Bryan Bollinger. "BYOB: How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself, and the Environment." Journal of Marketing 79, no. 4 (July 2015): 1–15.
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    By: Joshua W. Buckholtz, Uma R. Karmarkar, Shengxuan Ye, Grace M. Brennan and Arielle Baskin-Sommers
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More from the Authors
  • The Impact of 'Display-Set' Options on Decision-Making By: Uma R. Karmarkar
  • Blunted Ambiguity Aversion During Cost-Benefit Decisions in Antisocial Individuals By: Joshua W. Buckholtz, Uma R. Karmarkar, Shengxuan Ye, Grace M. Brennan and Arielle Baskin-Sommers
  • The 4 Minds of the Customer: A Framework for Understanding and Applying the Science of Decision Making By: Ryan Hamilton and Uma R. Karmarkar
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