By Nella Letizia

I know you’re partial to convenience stores, H.I.,
but the sun don’t rise and set on the corner grocery.
-- Gale, from the 1987 movie "Raising Arizona"

His name was Les, but to youngster David Sprott, he looked like Santa Claus caught in some explosion. The big man worked and lived in the neighborhood junkyard in Ravenna, Ohio, and came to J.F. Sprott and Sons every day to buy his dinner—a hunk of Longhorn cheese and bread. He was filthy black from head to toe, except for the white hair flying off his head in all directions. Les couldn’t read, write or count; he pulled money from his pants pocket and laid it on the counter. The grocer, Sprott’s father Donald, took what was owed, and Les took back the rest.

Sprott’s father, mother and uncle checked on Les if he didn’t show up for a few days, such was the connection between the family general store and its regular customers. More likely than not, that extra attention was needed. Sprott and Sons, started in 1928 by Sprott’s grandfather, James Frederick, resided in a poor part of town and did more than dispense groceries, meat, fruits and vegetables, and gas.

"It was a place where the people could come to communicate," recalls Sprott, now an assistant professor of marketing at WSU. "The community was in need of that."

The general store’s hardwood floors saw the constant traffic of housewives, railroad workers, salesmen and delivery people. Sprott’s favorite memories in his first 10 years of living, aside from the huge candy aisle that was bigger than he was, sprang from the stores regulars—and their personalities. Like the candy salesmen who sought his opinion on their wares by offering samples. Or the guy who always bought a bottle of RC Cola and threw in a handful of peanuts. He’d drink the pop and eat the coke-soaked peanuts last.

Sprott and Sons served its customers in other ways, by offering credit or trading for payment. That’s how Sprott’s father came home one day with an anteater from a customer who traded the animal for what he owed on his bill.

The retail grocery market has grown far more complex since Sprott’s boyhood days. With the advent of branding and mass marketing, the tight connection between consumer and retailer was lost, he says. When Sprott and Sons closed in 1976, nothing replaced it. That early influence of the family general store partly fuels his work at WSU.

Sprott teaches courses in consumer behavior, brand management, and marketing and public policy. His research interests center around possessions and branding, and marketing and public policy.

With Kenneth C. Manning of Colorado State University and Anthony D. Miyazaki of University of Miami, Sprott studies consumer response to quantity surcharges—where a brand’s larger-sized package has a higher per-unit price than its equivalent smaller-sized package. Consumers typically expect larger packages to have a quantity discount, but quantity surcharges are common among package goods.

The researchers found in initial studies that surcharge pricing has a significant effect on purchase behavior—when faced with a quantity surcharge, individuals are more likely to purchase the non-surcharged smaller size. Sprott’s, Manning’s and Miyazaki’s further research contends that quantity surcharges are created unintentionally as part of the price-setting process and that most consumers actually benefit from them. Is it a service to consumers to institute protection legislation in this case?

"You have to balance out both sides in consumer protection," Sprott says. "What are the costs and benefits of protection activity? Sometimes, the benefits don’t outweigh the costs. There’s an intersection of what’s best for the consumer, what’s best for the retailer and what should the government do about it. Good, solid social science research would help legislators and consumers look at protection issues."

In another study, Sprott, Manning and Miyazaki studied unit price format on retail shelf labels at major grocery retailers. Considerable differences arose in how unit prices are presented to shoppers. For example, Massachusetts retailers present unit pricing in largest possible quantities, thereby overemphasizing pricing, Sprott says. Some states don’t have unit price provisions at all; some states are very specific in unit pricing regulations.

"If unit price information were presented in a more viewable way, it would be better for consumers overall," he says.

Retail shelf labels would have been a shock for Sprott’s grandfather. In the early days of the family general store, grocery items were kept behind the counter; customers had to ask the grocers for what they wanted. It’s harder still to picture how Les would have fared in a place like Wal-Mart. Sprott knows.

"He couldn’t have effectively survived today," he says. "My dad and his store protected him."