Grocery Shopping Essay

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Differences in Grocery Shopping Behavior as a Result of Sex and Quantity Grocery shopping is something that almost every person in a modern society must do to get their food, however, disposable plastic grocery bags are accumulating on landfills and are polluting our oceans. Environmentalists are now encouraging others to lessen their impact on the environment by opting for reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags while grocery shopping. Grocery and retail stores have gotten involved in this trend by selling their own reusable bags. This trend of shoppers bringing their own reusable bags with them when shopping is far less harmful for our environment, however, it is uncertain whether people are actually acting in such a way without …show more content…

As environmental awareness continues to increase, there has been a strong support of using reusable bags instead of using disposable plastic bags. A study examined whether proscription of plastic bags deters consumer from its use (Sharp, Høj, & Wheeler, 2010). The participants in the study were identified by sex and randomly chosen using the white pages and a commercial telephone interviewing field team. The participants were asked to generalize about their own behavior by rating how many times they would undertake a behavior of interest. It was found that a higher percentage of women said that they had taken their own bags to their last shopping trip than men (Sharp et al., 2010). Additionally, while 60% of the interviewees claimed to take their own bag shopping, 80% of them said that in a typical week they would use some sort of store-supplied plastic bag (Sharp et al., …show more content…

This study expanded on previous research because it analyzed how the sex of a grocery shopper affected shopping behavior. The study also differed from previous research because it was a naturalistic observation as opposed to a survey and it analyzed how the bag type affected the grocery shopping behavior. Consistent with previous research, it was hypothesized that women would use more bags than men. Additionally, it was hypothesized that people with plastic bags would have a higher quantity of bags than people with reusable

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