Caffeine increases consumer spend

January 16, 2023

A coffee whilst shopping makes us spend more money and buy more items. Great news for retailers – and word of warning for shoppers!

Caffeine is the world’s most popular stimulant and is consumed daily by a significant portion of the world’s population through coffee, tea, fizzy and energy drinks.

Going for a coffee is a standard part of the physical shopping experience for many consumers. Shopping online can involve a relaxing – caffeinated – drink too.

How does caffeine consumption influence purchasing decisions? A series of experiments in retail stores and in lab conditions highlight some very interesting findings.

• Consuming a caffeinated (vs noncaffeinated) drink before shopping enhances impulsivity in terms of more items purchased and higher spend;
• And the effect is stronger for “high-hedonic” products than “low-hedonic” products.

The findings are in interesting way for companies to entice consumers to spend. Equally, people worried about spending should avoid the coffee bar before shopping.

“In essence, caffeine consumption enhances energetic arousal, which, in turn, leads to impulsivity during the shopping trip,” says Dipayan Biswas in The Journal of Marketing. “Having a caffeinated beverage at the beginning of a shopping trip leads to higher impulsivity, whereby consumers purchase a higher number of items and spend more. This finding is important for marketers in terms of how a seemingly unrelated behavior of caffeine consumption can influence consumers’ spending amounts.”

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