Habitual behavior of household food expenditure by store type in the United States

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Habitual behavior of household food expenditure by store type in the United States Keehyun Lee1, Oral Capps, Jr ID2* 1 Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, United States of America, 2 Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States of America * a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Lee K, Capps O, Jr (2023) Habitual behavior of household food expenditure by store type in the United States. PLoS ONE 18(9): e0291340. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0291340 Editor: Shanjida Chowdhury, Southeast University, BANGLADESH Abstract We examine how socio-demographic factors, spending habits, and characteristics of the retail food environment affect household expenditure across all food and beverage categories by store outlet in the United States. The six outlets considered are grocery stores, convenience stores, discount stores, club stores, drug stores, and dollar stores. The source of data for this analysis is the Nielsen Homescan Panel over the period between 2011 and 2015. We employ a dynamic correlated random effect Tobit model to incorporate habitual purchasing behavior as well as a novel method to deal with zero observations using the inverse hyperbolic sine transformation. The results suggest that habitual spending behavior undoubtedly is a key factor in affecting food and beverage expenditures across all store outlets. Additionally, household size, age, urbanization, education, race, ethnicity, and region are drivers of household food and beverage expenditures across the six store outlets. Received: April 6, 2023 Accepted: August 29, 2023 Published: September 8, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Lee, Capps. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Data cannot be shared publicly as data is owned by the Kilts Center for Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Data are available from the the Kilts Marketing Center (contact via ) for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data. We confirm as the authors that no special privileges were received in accessing the data that other researchers would not have. The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from the Kilts Center for Marketing. Introduction Without question, the food retail environment has changed over the past few decades [1–3]. Over the past 25 years, several nontraditional store formats—including supercenters (such as Wal-Mart), dollar stores, and club stores—have gained market share and prominence in the retail food landscape. As exhibited in Fig 1, the Economic Research Service (ERS) breaks down nominal food expenditures into eight categories: (1) convenience stores; (2) grocery stores; (3) mail order/home delivery; (4) warehouse clubs/supercenters/mass merchandisers; (5) direct sales; (6) other food stores; (7) other stores foodservice; and (8) donations. Over the period 1997 to 2021, nominal expenditures from convenience stores were $10.86 billion on average; currently $14.67 billion; from grocery stores $365.14 billion on average; currently $515.43 billion; from mail order/home delivery $27.68 billion on average; currently $83.68 billion; from warehouse clubs/supercenters/mass merchandisers $129.52 billion on average; currently $219.85 billion. As shown in Fig 2, shares of nominal food at home expenditures over the period 1997 to 2021 were as follows: (1) convenience stores, 1.84% on average, ranging from 1.44% to 2.59%; currently 1.54%; (2) grocery stores, 60.60% on average, ranging from 53.94% to 72.00%; currently 53.94%; (3) mail order/home delivery, 4.16% on average, ranging from 2.72% to 8.76%; PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291340 September 8, 2023 1 / 28 PLOS ONE Habitual behavior of household food expenditure by store type in the United States Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Fig 1. Breakdown of nominal food at home expenditures, 1997 to 2021 (millions of dollars). Source: Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture. Okrent, A.M., H. Elitzak, T. Park, and S. Rehkamp, 2018. Measuring the Value of the U.S. Food System: Revisions to the Food Expenditure Series, Technical Bulletin (TB-1948), September, 72 pp. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291340.g001 currently 8.76%; and (4) warehouse clubs/supercenters/mass merchandisers, 19.92% on average, ranging from 7.99% to 25.50%; currently 23.00%. Accounting for about 77% of at-home food expenditures at present, the major outlets unequivocally are grocery stores and warehouse clubs/supercenters/mass merchandisers. But the share of nominal food expenditures from grocery stores has been on the decline over the period 1997 to 2021, while the share of Fig 2. Share of nominal food at home expenditures, 1997 to 2021, percent. Source: Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture. Okrent, A.M., H. Elitzak, T. Park, and S. Rehkamp, 2018. Measuring the Value of the U.S. Food System: Revisions to the Food Expenditure Series, Technical Bulletin (TB-1948), September, 72 pp. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291340.g002 PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291340 September 8, 2023 2 / 28 PLOS ONE Habitual behavior of household food expenditure by store type in the United States nominal food expenditures from warehouse clubs/supercenters/mass merchandisers has been relatively constant since 2017. The share of nominal food expenditures from convenience stores also has been relatively constant since 2015. On the other hand, the share of nominal food expenditures from mail order/home delivery has experienced a notable rise from 3.20% in 2013 to 8.76% currently, as well, longstanding outlets such as convenience stores, discount stores, and dollar stores have expanded their food offerings to better attract grocery shoppers [3]. The sole purpose of this study is to examine how socio-demographic factors, spending habits, and characteristics of the retail food environment affect household expenditure across all food and beverage categories by store type. Whether traditional or nontraditional, store outlets differ in prices, product assortment, advertising strategies, and location [3]. The various outlets considered in this study are grocery, convenience, discount, club, drug, and dollar store types. The source of data for this analysis is the Nielsen Homescan Panel over the period between 2011 and 2015. Specifically, we form a balanced panel of 28,109 households who participated in the survey for all five years from 2011 to 2015 (...truncated)