Check Out Charity

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Asking customers to support a cause when they pay for stuff can heighten their anxiety. Contrary to the common belief that shoppers feel good about making donations at checkout, we have found that there is a downside to such charity campaigns.

For our study, co-authored with Alex Zablah, we researched how customers respond to donation requests made by cashiers or automated checkout kiosks.

We interviewed 60 shoppers, asking them to describe what they felt when they were asked to donate while ringing up their purchases at a variety of retailers based on their recollections of that interaction. About 40% of the words that these customers used expressed negative feelings associated with anxiety such as “pressured,” “annoyed” and “concerned about being judged.” Another 7% of the words conveyed other negative sentiments, including “guilty” or “bad.” The rest were neutral, such as “indifferent.”

Only about 20% of the words participants in these interviews used to describe their feelings were positive, such as “nice” or “compassionate.”

We also conducted a series of online experiments, in which a total of 970 people took part.

All of them were prompted to imagine that they were making a purchase, either at a fast-food drive-through or a grocery store. Half were also instructed to picture being asked to donate to a charity during checkout. The results were consistent with our findings from the interviews. Participants in the groups involving a charitable solicitation experienced more anxiety than those who only had to focus on making a purchase.

We also found evidence that this anxiety can be relieved when customers agree to donate, but only when the solicitation comes from a cashier, as opposed to an automated request made by a computer or self-service checkout machine.