Creative communication for chance discovery in shopping

This study considered an information presentation method to help customers make a concept-articulation type of purchase. When customers follow the concept-articulation type of thinking, they only have vague requirements and try to make a gradual clarification of what they really want through the interaction with salesclerk(s). Skillful salesclerks can communicate with their customers appropriately to discover an opportunity for bringing the customers to their concept-articulation, which often leads to a successful sale. Based on the observations from our analysis of these human behavior in actual purchase activities, we constructed a system called S-Conart (Concept Articulator for Shoppers) to support the concept-articulation type of purchase. The user study conducted using S-Conart shows that using a different method of presenting information can cause a change in the user’s mental world, which is also observed in a real-life shopping situation, although in a different form. The result of this user study suggests the possibility of chance discovery by customers themselves, which is expected to be useful for building support systems for concept-articulation type of shoppers.