One of the many things I love about my job is that it allows me to stumble upon answers to some of the (usually trivial) questions that pop into my head while I’m out in the world being a consumer.

In addition to clearing space for more minutiae, solving these mysteries also provides a measure of comfort: There are other souls out there who have pondered the same issues, and they’ve actually taken the time to conduct research on the matter.

Over the past several months, two long-pondered queries have been answered.

First, as a veteran clipper of grocery store coupons, I’ve always wondered if there were shoppers who habitually only buy the items featured in the weekly coupons, in theory gaming the system by short-circuiting the loss-leader concept. Further, if there were a lot of such shoppers out there, could their actions have a tangible impact on a store’s bottom line?

As reported by online news source Newswise, a study found that these “extreme cherry pickers” - grocery shoppers who buy only sale items and nothing else - do not harm retailer profits.

The study was conducted by Debabrata Talukdar, associate professor of marketing in the University at Buffalo School of Management, K. Sudhir, professor of marketing at the Yale School of Management, and Dinesh K. Gauri, assistant professor of marketing in Syracuse University’s Whitman School of Business, for a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research.

The academics looked at several variations of cherry picking to determine the impact on retailer profits and on consumer savings. The research found that extreme cherry pickers barely affected profits. “Grocery retailers’ fear of extreme cherry pickers is overblown,” said Talukdar in the Newswise article. “Extreme cherry pickers make up only 1.2 percent of grocery store customers and they only reduce profits less than 1 percent.”

Some cherry-picking shoppers buy sale items at only one store over a period of time, while others visit different stores across an area to buy sales items.

So is all that effort worth it for consumers? Apparently yes. The professors determined that cherry pickers saved more money than shoppers who hadn’t actively searched for promotions. The extreme cherry pickers obtained 76 percent of potential savings, while the store-loyal cherry pickers obtained 68 percent of potential savings in the marketplace. Cross-store cherry pickers over time obtained 66 percent of potential savings. Sheer chance led even those shoppers who were not searching for promotions to capture 54 percent of potential savings.

Unsavory associations

My second question has come up frequently as I’ve maneuvered the aisles of my local SuperTarget: Does the vast array of products available at the average megamart – everything from motor oil to Bibb lettuce – ever create unsavory associations in consumers’ minds as they look in their shopping carts? And, if so, are there any downsides for consumer product makers or food companies?

Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of marketing and psychology at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, and Andrea Morales, an assistant professor of marketing at Arizona State’s W.P. Carey School of Business, looked at these very questions and published their work in the Journal of Marketing Research.

They found that products such as lard and feminine napkins evoke “feelings of disgust” that can reduce the appeal of other products they may inadvertently come in contact with in shoppers’ grocery carts or on store shelves.

Fitzsimons and Morales aimed to gauge the effect that these “disgusting” products have on consumers’ opinions of other products in their grocery carts. They performed a series of experiments in which participants observed food products placed close to or touching a distasteful product.

Their work suggests that companies may want to reconsider their packaging and shelf-positioning strategies in order to safeguard their brands from the effects of offending products.

Other products that can evoke feelings of disgust in consumers include trash bags, cat litter, diapers, cigarettes, mayonnaise and shortening. “Because these products are so common, consumers are likely to experience feelings of disgust on routine shopping trips,” Fitzsimons said in an article on the research posted on the ScienceDaily site.

In all cases, products that touched or rested against disgusting products became less appealing than products that were at least an inch away from the offending products. The effect lingered: The participants who were asked more than an hour after observing the products how much they wanted to try a cookie were less likely to want it if the package of cookies had been in contact with a package of feminine napkins.

While this behavior is perhaps misguided, to the researchers, it’s not completely irrational, as it likely derives from basic instincts that caution us against eating foods that have come in contact with insects or other sources of germs. “Our experiments demonstrated quite clearly that caution about eating contaminated food is simply misapplied to contexts where real contamination is not possible,” Morales said.

Especially vulnerable

The researchers say food items sold in clear packaging are especially vulnerable to the effects of what they call “product contagion,” which occurs when one product’s negative properties are transferred to another.

In one experiment participants viewed packages of rice cakes - some wrapped in transparent packaging and some in opaque paper carrying a “rice cakes” label - that were touching a container of lard. The rice cakes in the clear packaging were later estimated by respondents to be higher in fat than those in the opaque packaging. “The product packaging and positioning led the participants to view the rice cakes as taking on fat content from the lard,” Morales said.

How can marketers combat product contagion? The study pointed to opaque product packaging, which was seen as a sufficient barrier to prevent the spread of unpleasantness. “Prior marketing research on packaging has held that clear packaging helps sell products because it allows customers to visualize what they are buying,” Fitzsimons said. “Based on this research, I would caution marketers that they need to be attuned to not only what is inside their packaging but also to what is around a product that could negatively affect its sales.”