Too Cool For Doors: Do You Think A Glass Door Would Prevent You From Buying Fresh Produce?

Using data from Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), accessed through NORC (National Opinion Research Center), we utilize weekly sales data for eight supermarket stores in Northern California across the years 2016-2018. Four of these stores received retrofit doors on the produce section in various weeks of February of 2017 while the other four did not. We matched these four pairs of treatment and control stores by demographics such as annual total store sales values, annual total produce sales values, and geographic location. We control for factors such as weather, holidays, and extreme events such as an E. coli outbreak in 2018 and then run three Difference-in-Difference (DiD) models. As a result of installing retrofit doors, we find that produce sales increased by about $5,000 per week for the treatment store #3 and about $2,000 per week for treatment store #4. We also find that there was no statistically significant influence on produce sales after the installation of retrofit doors for treatment stores #1 and #2. Our multivariate econometric approach contributes to the literature by addressing how retrofit doors influence produce sales.

Bowman, Brennan Thesis Final.pdf (1.54 MB)

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