Understanding Low-Literate Consumer Behavior

1. Understanding Low-Literate Consumer Behavior A typical visit to the grocery store for a literate consumer may involve trading off on a few attributes and price while purchasing products. Occasionally, consumers may not have sufficient cash at the checkout counter and leave a few things behind, perhaps attributing this to forgetfulness. However, what is described above may not come close to the typical shopping trip for some low-literate consumers. Considerable effort may be expended on basic, perceptual tasks such as locating a product and reading or computing the final price, leaving little effort to trade off between the give and get of each purchase. This may lead to purchase of a product as soon as it is located or on the basis of cheapest price. Also, being short of money at the counter may be cause for despair, whereas having sufficient money may be cause for celebration, the attribution perhaps being to one’s level of literacy.

2. Some Qualifications • Important to avoid painting with a broad brush • Range of functional literacy • Literacy used as an umbrella concept in need of further sophistication • Research focuses on existence of described behaviors rather than incidence • Many differences with literate consumers are qualitative, some are differences are a matter of degree

3. What is literacy ? • Literacy - possessing intellectual skills associated with basic competencies in reading and writing • Numeracy – same as above for counting • Functional literacy - competencies to perform tasks thought requisite to adequateadult functioning

4. Sample • Students at Adult Education Centers in the US • 3 levels - 0 - 4; 5 - 8; 9 - 12 • Adult Basic Education --> 0-4 • High School Equivalency • ABE II or Pre GED --> 5-8 • GED --> 9-12 • Operational Segments: 0-4, 5-12

5. Comparison Groups • English as Second Language students - 0-12 • Poor literate

6. Overview of methods • Interviews with students • Interviews with teachers • Group and individual shopping observations • Volunteer tutoring • Data collection from October 1997 for 55 months • Analysis of transcriptions/field notes – discussion among coauthors

7. Overview of Data Collection and Analysis

8. Overview of Findings – “The Things We Take for Granted” • considerable amount of effort is spent in basic tasks • locating a product • locating a price display • reading a price, and computing volume • computing the price of two if the price was one is known • sometimes, purchase immediately follows location or reading of price given effort spent on basic tasks • confusion due to multiple price-listings, • difficulty computing prices on percentage off or fraction off deals • difficulty locating the correct packages • difficulty computing total cost in a shopping trip • allowing for taxes a significant concern • difficulty interpreting magnitudes • difficulty estimating the total cost of products in shopping cart • nutritional labels often not understood • unit prices not comprehended

9. Conceptual Framework

10. How Individuals Think • Concrete Reasoning – Focusing on a single perceptible piece of information (e.g., price) and not abstracting across individual pieces of information (e.g., price and size) • :“. . . I look to see which costs the most and which costs the less, and so I just get the smaller one because they cost the less.” • Interviewer: . . . let’s say you buy a packet of bread that’s half the size . . . you are getting less bread for the money. How do you try to make sure it’s cheapest in terms of how much you are getting also? • “I just look at the tag and see what’s cheapest. I don’t look by their sizes.”

11. How Individuals Think • Pictographic thinking • More than dependence on pictures • “Seeing” brand names as images in a scene • Visualizing amounts to buy by imagining usage situation (e.g., amount of sugar to bake a cake) • Adding shopping cart by visualizing dollar bills • “… I got that picture of how many liquid in a jar to how many yards in a stick and picture a stick and picture how many units in it and I just caught on right there...” • -“When you go back to the store, you look and see oh, this is the brand I bought before – I ain’t gonna get this, I’m gonna get that other one.” Q: How do you tell that it’s the brand you bought before? -“Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes.” Q: Just from the packaging… - “Right…”

12. How Individuals Cope • Dependence on Others • sometimes to the point of complete delegation. “No, I don’t do too much stuff, my daughter do all the shopping . . . when I am a daughter . . . my mom did a lot of shopping .”

13. How Individuals Cope • Self-Esteem Maintenance • Yeah. Like, I went to IGA to buy some things and the money that I pick up off the table at home was not the money I supposed to pick up so when I finish buying everything I just take out the money and hand it her and she says “no, this is a 5 dollars you gave to me” and it was over 10 dollars almost 20. then I’m like oh my God. I feel so bad. I tell her I say ok, don’t put it back. I’ll just walk home and get the money and come back. I says ok; she says yes. SO I went home and get the money and I tell my husband and he’s like you always, you always I was feeling real bad. Real bad. Because I know how people thinks. I know how people thinks. People think well, she didn’t have that money, but she come in and pick up those things but sometimes it is not so. Everybody is not the same. Everybody is not the same. And if one person made that mistake you don’t watch everybody with that mistake . You give everybody a clear chance.

14. How Individuals Cope • Rudimentary Defensive Techniques • Falling back on some very simple rules during shopping to avoid being cheated or to avoid overspending. R: I was reading the label on the polish sausage, trying to see what kinds was they… [but before I could read:] I just had to ask somebody, “what this say? You know I can’t see man, can you help me out? I need glasses.” I play it off like that, that’s how I used to do it.