Inside the Mind of the Shopper: The Science of Retailing, Second Edition

8. Three Moments of Truth and Three Currencies

“If we will not buy, we cannot sell.”

—U.S. President William McKinley

A woman in her 30s moves through the aisles of a Stop & Shop outside of Boston. She was selected for our study because she planned to purchase dish detergent, one of the types of products of interest to our client. We fitted her with specially designed glasses connected to a device that records her field of vision every 3/25ths of a second and relays it to a computer (see Figure 8.1). The glasses also reflect the corneal image of her eyes so we can track exactly what she is looking at in her field of vision as she moves through the supermarket aisles. Instead of merely watching shoppers, the glasses allow us to actually see what ...