Does Stockpiling Cause Overeating?

When consumers stockpile products, how do they decide when and how much they will consume? To answer this question, we develop a framework showing how the salience and convenience of products influence post purchase consumption incidence and quantity.
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Multiple research methods–including scanner data analysis, a field study, and two laboratory studies–show that, once the decision to consume has been made, stockpiling increases consumption quantity for most products.
However, we find that stockpiling triggers consumption incidence only for high–convenience products and that this effect is partially mediated by the higher salience caused by stockpiling. In addition to providing new insights on how consumers make post purchase consumption decisions, these results have implications for the debate on the value of promotions that induce stockpiling.