Script
Hello, my name is Alanna Zhang and my research is on the student shoppers at Chapel Hill’s Franklin Street Target. The student body seems to have a consensus on Target being the most convenient and well-rounded store nearby, so I was interested in understanding what the most and least common purposes were for UNC students visiting Target as well as their spending habits.
As seen in the diagram of the Franklin St Target, there are sections in the store covering practically everything the average college student might need. My expectation was that food was the primary reason for visiting, since I’ve been noticing fellow students skipping meals frequently and supplementing them with snacks. In fact, a study on Michigan State University students found that 22% skipped breakfast and 80% consumed at least one snack per day. While UNC is not exactly MSU, I feel that this, as well as cooking made food a prominent reason.
My first observation took place on a Monday afternoon following classes, and my expectation about food’s popularity was quickly confirmed. However, Starbucks and home supplies were also very popular. (On my diagram, darker blue means more shoppers in a section and lighter means that there were fewer.) Students were dispersed throughout the store, so while almost everyone bought at least one food item, there were a variety of other products being bought too.
On Sunday, I returned for my second observation. One main difference I noticed was that non-food items like dorm decor and toilet paper became more popular. Interestingly, while food didn’t become less popular overall, I saw a slight shift from dry snacks and “no preparation needed” foods to cooking ingredients. In other words, during the weekend, I believe that shoppers felt like they had more time to spend on non-academic pursuits like cooking and this translated to buying less for the given day and more for the long-term.
Consistent through both observations, students didn’t spend exorbitantly and most walked away with one or two bags, amounting to no more than $30. Spending was greater over the weekend, but I feel that most UNC students shopped responsibly. Snacks, fruit, and home/bathroom items were the most common purposes for shopping. Clothing, frozen meals, and cooking ingredients were less common, and beauty and recreation were rarest. Logically, this ranking follows the idea that students have a limited budget and therefore spend on the items they consider most necessary to their daily lives, sacrificing more extra and expensive products.
Thank you for listening to the findings of my study on UNC students shopping at Target!
Explication of Research
Preface
As an out-of-state student, I do not have the luxury of simply driving back home to grab the items that I’m missing; when my family drove eight and a half hours down from Ohio in August, everything I thought I would need for the next seventeen weeks away from home was crammed into the car. Unsurprisingly, I discovered in the following days that I’d forgotten a few things, and in a university of over 30,000 students, there is a sizable population that will find themselves needing something they don’t have at some point while living in Chapel Hill, whether that is snacks, winter clothes, or an additional comforter. Where better to find all of these than the Target located on Franklin Street? The Chapel Hill Target is evidently geared toward UNC students, containing the full range of products, from college essentials to Starbucks and groceries, and is a reasonable walking distance of around fifteen minutes away. It’s well-visited by UNC students and this prompted the question for me: what are the most and least common purposes that students are shopping at Target for, and what are their spending habits like?
Background Information
The Target located at 143 W Franklin St, Ste 120, Chapel Hill, NC boasts a selection of products that covers most common needs that a college student has. The store has sections for groceries (including bakery, frozen foods, snacks, drinks, alcohol, and refrigerated food subsections), clothing, home items, bathroom, beauty and makeup, recreation and technology, UNC merchandise, a pharmacy, and a Starbucks. With this being the case, there were a plethora of possible reasons I expected UNC students to visit Target for.
My largest anticipated reason was food. 22% of college students in a study at Michigan State University reported skipping breakfast (and lower percentages of 8% and 5% for lunch and dinner, respectively), and around 80% consumed at least one snack a day (Huang, Song, Schemmel, & Hoerr, 1994). From personal interactions with UNC students, these trends of skipping meals and snacking are consistent. From another angle, a 2016 study on 4,845 UNC undergraduate and graduate students found that 86% of students did some frequency (sometimes or often) of cooking, bringing in a different need to buy food (Soldavini & Berner, 2021). Other than food, I also expected school supplies and dorm products to be popular, and an analysis of online shoppers introduced necessities and recreation as additional reasons for shopping (Seock & Bailey, 2007).
One study on colleges students buying on-campus food showed that certain products such as drinks varied in popularity at different times of day (Conroy, Roy, Soo, Swinburn, & Wall, 2019). In addition, it identified a negative association between price and healthiness and also a correlation between likeliness of purchasing and the factors of price, healthiness, and taste. I thought this interesting information from Conroy et al. might have been applicable to the Chapel Hill Target’s situation, so I chose a weekday and a weekend date to do observations in order to see the variation in purchasing habits.
Observational Data and Analysis
My first trip to Target was on a Monday at 3:30, an hour marking the end of classes for the day for many, hence the store was packed with students when I entered. The energy within the store was overwhelming to me, with around fifty student shoppers moving chaotically between sections of the store. A majority of students came alone, but a substantial number of students shopped in groups also, presumably friends or roommates shopping together. It was lively, both because of the chatter within groups and the constant business of shopping. However, one thing I noticed quickly was how social interaction tended to be within preexisting connections rather than new ones formed in the store. The extent to which people talked to those outside their group was just to checkout or receive a drink from employees.
I had expected most students to only shop from the grocery section or Starbucks; instead, while almost every student did pass through the grocery section during their visit, at least one or two people were present in every section, and there was a particular concentration in the home section. The most common items that people bought were beverages (i.e. energy drinks, sodas, and Starbucks), dry snacks (i.e. chips, granola bars), and breakfast foods (i.e. bread, pastries). Starbucks and the pharmacy acted almost like sections separate from the rest of the store because a significant portion of students would visit and leave without purchasing anything else. Less common items included fruits and vegetables, frozen meals, clothes, comforters, bathroom products, and seasonal-themed room decor. The emptiest sections were beauty, school, and tech and recreation. Considering UNC has been in session for eight weeks, it makes sense that no one was looking for school supplies at this time, but it was also interesting to note how the beauty and the tech and recreation sections of the store remained clear of shoppers.
Students most frequently left the store with one or two bags, indicating that shoppers usually make small purchases. Within groups of students who shopped together, though most individuals bought items, but I did notice a few who left empty-handed, indicating that they may have gone simply to keep others company.
My second trip to Target during the weekend was immediately different from the first because the atmosphere of the store was much quieter and calmer. There were half as many shoppers during the observation, and they were more spread out than anticipated. Purchases of cooking ingredients became more common while pre-made foods became less common. Combinations of home, bathroom, and clothes were also more popular. Since non-food items at Target are more expensive, the average spending during the weekend was higher.
It was Family Weekend, so there were a couple students with parents in the store, and they spent the most by far.
Conclusion
As predicted, UNC students most commonly shopped at Target for food, particularly dry snacks and foods that could be consumed without any extra preparation. Other food items like breakfast foods (i.e. bakery items and beverages) and fruit were also common. Over the weekend, there was a clear shift from these “easy,” no preparation foods to cooking materials and raw foods. I hypothesize that students felt they had more time to spend on food during the weekend when classes and academics were less urgent and less time-consuming. Necessary dorm/home items were second most popular, likely due to their importance in everyday life. Compared to such essential items, the largely ignored games and makeup products are more for recreation than a vital purpose.
The spending of students was fairly low throughout both observations, averaging about $10-30. This reflects both the limited budget that students deal with, but also their responsible spending. Over the weekend, students appeared to shop more for the long term than on weekdays as they bought non-food and dorm items that were more expensive but also carried greater future value. In both observations, the prioritization of necessary or useful products over would-be-nice and recreational items leads me to believe that UNC students are handling their spending at Target rationally.
References
Conroy, D., Roy R., Soo D., Swinburn B., Wall C. (2019, April 11). Exploring university food environment and on-campus food purchasing behaviors, preferences, and opinions. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 51(7), 865-875. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2019.03.003.
Huang, Y.-L., Song, W. O., Schemmel, R. A., & Hoerr, S. M. (1994). What do college students eat? food selection and meal pattern. Nutrition Research, 14(8), 1143–1153. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0271-5317(05)80242-8
Seock, Y.-K., & Bailey, L. R. (2007, November 27). The influence of college students’ shopping orientations and gender differences on online information searches and purchase behaviours. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 32, 113-121. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2007.00647.x.
Soldavini, J., & Berner, M. (2021). Characteristics associated with cooking frequency among college students. International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, 23, 100303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijgfs.2021.100303.
Featured Image
Headley CW. (2020). If you do this when shopping, you are putting yourself at much more risk for COVID-19. Ladders. https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/if-you-do-this-when-shopping-you-are-putting-yourself-at-much-more-risk-for-covid-19.