Rhythms in Shopping Participation of Seniors vs. Non-Seniors: A Latent Segmentation AFT-based Duration Model

Elderly consumers are generally acknowledged to have a growing share in the marketplace. Recent researches on elderly behavior suggest that more than thirty percent of seniors’ out-of-home activities are related to shopping activities. This paper compares the inter-shopping duration of senior citizens aged 65 and older and their younger cohort. In this study, a latent segmentation AFT-based duration model is developed to model inter-shopping duration. Previous attempts on modelling the inter-shopping duration were based on proportional hazard (PH) approach. However, for the cases that proportionality assumption is not valid, the applicability of the PH model would become questionable. The proposed AFT-based model is developed for both seniors and non-seniors. The results indicated that the elderly people are more likely to be erratic shoppers. In the non-elderly group, 62% of shoppers were regular and 38% of them were erratic. The covariate effects results for non-senior shoppers revealed that higher income and bigger household size would result in shorter regular inert-shopping durations and longer random shopping durations. Non-senior shoppers with higher education have longer regular inter-shopping durations, and do more random shopping activities. Furthermore, non-senior shoppers who live alone do more random shopping activities, perhaps due to the reason that shopping activity is more like a leisure activity for them. For the elderly cohort, engaging in shopping activities with companions decreases their inter-shopping duration, perhaps because seniors are more willing to socialize with others. As expected, higher income or presence of children in the household would increase the frequency of shopping activities.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values. Alternate title: Rhythms in Shopping Participation of Seniors Versus Younger Cohort: Latent Segmentation AFT-Based Duration Model.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Transportation Research Board

    500 Fifth Street, NW
    Washington, DC  United States  20001
  • Authors:
    • Karimi, Behzad
    • Pourabdollahi, Zahra
    • Mohammadian, Abolfazl Kouros
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2014

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 16p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01515632
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 14-1485
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Feb 24 2014 4:47PM