Average Quicksand

Herb Sorensen of TNS Sorensen talks about "Average" Quicksand in shopping trips:

' ... What is the life experience of the average human being? Other than that they are born and die, it gets pretty complicated. That's why we don't usually ask questions like this: we recognize a certain absurdity in the concept. And yet, lot's of absurd answers are available for less than insightful questions about shopping. For example, how long is the average shopping trip? This seems like a legitimate question.

In fact, we have been thinking about this question for years, partially because classifying trips by their "length" has been done for more years than I have been in shopper research. Of course when speaking of trip length, usually people are referring to how long in minuutes. However, when we began measuring actual shopper paths, the door was opened to measuring the distance they traveled as the length of the trip. Maybe it wouldn't be too great of a stretch to consider length in relation to the number of items they purchased, or the amount of money they spent... ' (see the complete article linked to above, and his recent book: Inside the Mind of the Shopper)