Groceries delivered by mistake: an experimental study of customers’ honesty
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/2526-7884.2025.266914Keywords:
Field experiment, Customer behavior, Supermarket Delivery, DishonestyAbstract
The present paper reports the results of a field experiment destined to examine to what extent supermarket customers who find an unordered and not paid-for product in their delivery crate call up the supermarket to report the mistakenly delivered product. A majority of customers (517 out of 622) failed to report the undeserved product. Several factors appeared to have affected the decision of whether or not to report the extra product. Customers who placed a delivery order after selecting the groceries in person reported the undeserved product five times more often than customers who placed an order via the supermarket app. Customers with stronger loyalty to the supermarket, as manifested by their length of engagement with the supermarket and frequency of delivery orders, were more likely to report the extra product, whereas customers who placed a more expensive order were less likely to do so. It took honest customers 10.53 hours, on average, to report the undeserved product. Customers with stronger loyalty to the supermarket reported more quickly than others.
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