Should shopping carts be more like wheelbarrows? [marketing study]

Supermarket shopping carts (trolleys) tend to have horizontal handles – would people buy more things if the handles were parallel – like a wheelbarrow? New research from City University of London and the University of Innsbruck suggest that the answer could be ‘yes’.

In an experimental study :

“supermarket shoppers purchased more products and spent more of their own money when shopping with a parallel-handle cart than with a standard horizontal handlebar.“

The reasons, say the researchers, may lie in the activation of a different set of arm muscles which push carts wihich have parallel handles.

£29 will buy you 24 hrs access to download the Journal of Marketing advance online publication : Getting a Handle on Sales: Shopping Carts Affect Purchasing by Activating Arm Muscles

Alternatively, a full copy may be found here courtesy City, University of London Institutional Repository.

Research research Martin Gardiner