NBC’s “Today” Show Taps Dean Barbara Kahn for Marketing Insight on Women’s Grocery Store Habits
July 08, 2010
 |
|
VIEW VIDEO OF KAHN ON TODAY SHOW |
Kahn is an internationally recognized scholar on variety seeking, brand loyalty, and retail assortment issues whose research provides marketing managers with a better understanding of the consumer choice process. On the “Today” show, Kahn was asked to analyze grocery lists provided by the show’s hosts, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. She noted that purchases are sometimes influenced by the public image women want to portray to other shoppers.
“What you buy, the brands you buy, the products you choose to buy, [shows] what you want the public to see because when you’re buying your groceries of course, everybody can see what you’re doing,” said Kahn, who co-authored Grocery Revolution: The New Focus on the Consumer, a book that chronicled the dramatically changing supermarket industry and outlined how consumers make choices within the supermarket.Kahn says that people often go to the store with a short list, but end up buying more. She related that to Gifford’s list, which included mostly healthy items such as yogurt, bananas, low-fat milk and fish.
“You decided this in advance, so it might not be what you actually [would buy] in the store, so it might be what you want people to think about you,” Kahn told Gifford.
