Cultivating Community: Elevating Supermarket Appeal Through Regionally Sourced Products
(A2024-118804)

AUTHORS

Tom Wielheesen, University of Groningen; Laurens Sloot, University of Groningen; Tammo Bijmolt, University of Groningen; Jun Yao, Macquarie University

ABSTRACT

In recent years, sourcing regional products in grocery stores has increasingly gained attention. Despite consumers hold positive attitudes towards regional products (i.e., quality, sustainability, community engagement), limited empirical evidence exists in the context of grocery stores integrating regional products to their assortment on overall store performance and consumers' in-store behavior. This paper explores, employing the cognition-affection-conation framework, the impact of integrating regional products on consumers' store evaluations in an empirical and experimental study. The first empirical findings reveal that regional products positively affect consumers overall perception of assortment variety and being an effective way for retailers to express community engagement, leading to higher emotional attachments to a store. Grocery retailers can use these insights to better understand the impact of regional products in stores and to further refine their assortment.