You are What you Buy: From Value Orientations to Sustainable Purchase Patterns
(A2021-93820)

AUTHORS

Huong Nguyen, Stockholm School of Economics; Sara Rosengren, Stockholm School of Economics; Emelie Fröberg, Stockholm School of Economics; Rickard Sandberg, Stockholm School of Economics

ABSTRACT

This study aims to understand how consumer value orientations impact sustainable or unsustainable purchasing patterns using a mixture hidden Markov model. Based on 2-year panel scanner data, our proposed model reveals the latent states, ‘‘value orientations", emerging over time and consequently influencing purchase behaviors. The consumers potentially adopt the value orientations in a predictive order, starting with egoistic, then biospheric, and finally, altruistic. It is noteworthy that this process may take a very long time. Thanks to the segmentation, we find different initial value orientations, adoption tendencies, and likelihood to translate the values orientations to the purchasing behaviors from different clusters of consumers. The findings and techniques potentially help practitioners to infer consumers' value orientation from readily accessible data and target the right consumers at the right time.