Researching consumer behavior, digital marketing and Path to Purchase

Valdimar Sigurðsson, Professor at the Department of Business and Economics at Reykjavik University and head of RU’s Research Center for Marketing and Consumer Psychology, received RU’s 2024 Research Award. 

Valdimar’s research focuses on consumer behavior, retail, digital media, aviation and tourism, and professional marketing. He has placed particular emphasis on the marketing of healthy and sustainable food and has collaborated on research projects with companies and institutions both in Iceland and abroad. He joined RU in 2007. 

Valdimar studied psychology at the University of Iceland and recalls that the first year was quite demanding. 

"The first year in psychology was a bit brutal. You needed an average grade of six to get to the second year, which isn’t that high, but the professors treated you a bit differently—as if you were on probation. I made it in, but psychology was a popular subject and in Iceland you could only study it at the time in the University of Iceland, so they could afford to be a bit tough, and grades were probably among the lowest in the university" says Valdimar. 

"We had to read scientific articles, and sometimes they were so badly photocopied that the ends of each line were missing, but no one complained. You just pushed through, and it toughened you up. I think many people in that program at the time benefited from it and have gone far. I had been on the board of the student association at Menntaskólinn í Kópavogi and learned a lot from that and had fun. So, I was fresh and ready to take my studies seriously. I also worked in tough construction jobs during the summers, breaking concrete all day, which gave me a real appreciation for the luxury of university studies." 

He says he developed an early interest in behavior analysis, understanding human behavior and how the environment can shape and influence it—and started working in behavioral therapy for children with autism while studying. 

"That was a great learning experience. Looking back, it was like a practical internship because it was so interesting and motivating to read books and articles and then go to work and help the children. It worked incredibly well, and I learned to manage difficult behaviors. That’s when I saw how powerful this field is. I ended up writing my thesis with Zuilma Gabriela Sigurðardóttir, which was a great experience," says Valdimar, who has been invited to speak at the International Association for Behavior Analysis in Washington this year. 

In his third year of psychology, Valdimar realized that psychology alone wouldn’t satisfy his growing interest in business. He therefore added business administration as a minor and eventually spent an additional year at the School of Business and Economics as part of his undergraduate degree. He then pursued a master’s degree in marketing at the University of Iceland and Aarhus University. 

"I loved studying at the National Library. I spent all my time there," says Valdimar, who wrote his master’s thesis with Þórhallur Örn Guðlaugsson and Gabriela. He is grateful for the opportunity to have taught marketing research at both undergraduate and graduate levels right after finishing his studies. 

During his master’s studies, Valdimar began to combine behavior analysis and behavioral economics, focusing on the field of behavioral economics with an emphasis on consumer behavior. 

"In Aarhus, there’s a large research center called the MAAP Centre that focuses on food marketing. It has close ties to the food and agricultural sectors in Denmark and is one of the best in Europe. I took some courses connected to that, especially on consumer behavior, and I really enjoyed it. I particularly liked being in classes taught by Klaus Grunert. Then I started my PhD in Cardiff, where I studied under Distinguished Research Professor Gordon Foxall, who at the time was the leading name in applying behavior analysis and behavioral economics to research in consumer behavior and marketing." 

Valdimar submitted his dissertation two years after starting and then began working at RU and waiting for the defence. His PhD project was a study conducted in Iceland in collaboration with the retail company Hagar and Íslensk Ameríska, based on behavioral models and experiments in retail environments. 

"One of the academic questions I posed was: how far can we go in turning retail stores into 'laboratories'? In traditional labs, you try to control every variable, but the setting can be artificial, especially when it involves people. We conducted experiments in Icelandic stores—Bónus, Hagkaup, 10-11—for three months. We didn’t change anything about shelf arrangements or prices, except for one product, we tried to keep everything constant -  except for the intervention. Either we changed the price of that one product or moved it to a different shelf. Before the experiment, sales data were all over the place, but once we started controlling variables, clear patterns emerged," says Valdimar, offering an example involving snack placement in stores. 

"Hugi Sævarsson, who was marketing director at the wholesale Íslensk-Ameríska, and I had information from Procter & Gamble showing that 90% of potato chip buyers want to buy it—but only if they see them. If the consumer doesn’t see the chips, 90% of sales are lost. We experimented with moving the target product to the middle shelf, then to a lower shelf, and the results were fascinating. Some stores had horizontal shelves, which let us control visibility more effectively." 

Valdimar also ran pricing experiments. For example, he found that lowering the price of shampoo didn’t increase sales—in fact, sales dropped. The research also showed that consumers don’t pay much attention to price but instead trust the store. They also use prices to judge quality. 

Valdimar found it intriguing to study both social psychology and economics at the same time. In social psychology, people are seen as limited and easily misled; in economics, they’re seen as rational and well-informed. Marketing draws from both, taking a more balanced view. Behavioral science emphasizes studying behavior directly, and marketing has increasingly moved in that direction. One part of his research focused on in-store advertising. 

"Whenever we introduced in-store ads, sales actually dropped. So untested messages are dangerous. The Icelandic market needs much more pre-testing and a far better understanding of the consumer," says Valdimar. The field is moving in the right direction, but he believes there is still room to design and test messages more carefully before releasing them. 

Valdimar has worked extensively with advertising agencies and major companies, providing consultation and leading large research projects. One of the companies he has collaborated with is Icelandair, especially on research into digital marketing and the use of social media. 

"I got a really fun consulting project at Icelandair involving the design of customer journey experiences comparing Saga Class and Economy Class. It was exciting, and I got to know the company well. Then, mainly through our graduate program and related research, we began working with Icelandair on social media marketing. It’s been fantastic company to work with, and they’ve hired many of our students. We’ve maintained strong connections, both through research projects and internships. Our students have been able to attend important meetings and gain access to Icelandair’s social media platforms," says Valdimar. 

Many of these studies have been conducted at the Center for Research in Marketing and Consumer Psychology (RU-CRMC), which Valdimar founded in 2016 when he became a Professor at RU. The center focuses on two main research areas: food marketing, sustainability, and health on the one hand, and aviation and tourism marketing on the other. 

The latest research by Valdimar and his colleagues explores what happens along the path to purchase, that is, what occurs before a consumer buys a product. They are using eye-scanning research to study this. 

"You wear glasses while shopping, and we can see where you look and what you see in the store. Our latest project, which received a 72 million ISK grant from Rannís this year, aims to develop software, experiments, and solutions to use webcams to study people’s attention while shopping online. Jacob Orquin at Aarhus University and I are leading a project and hiring researchers inprogramming, designing, and developing this technology. Some commercial versions exist, but we want to make this open and more accessible to scientists and retail experiments," says Valdimar. 

A few years ago, he conducted a study in Norway, with his collaborators at the University of Tromsoe, using cameras and in-store analytics to observe shopping behavior.We observe how people move through the store and test behavioral models—where they stop, what they pick up and return, or don’treturn. We are particularly interested in shopping carts. If you take a cart, you’re a much more valuable customer. It’s likely your main store. For example, if a store claims to be a discount store but no one takes a cart there, then it’s not really a discount store. We are continuing these studies and segmenting shoppers" 

Asked why it matters to conduct this kind of research in Iceland, Valdimar emphasizes the importance of real-world knowledge in marketing, critical thinking, and investing in consumer understanding and marketing literacy. 

"What has always been a hallmark of RU is that the people teaching and researching here are deeply in touch with the business world. Where would you like to study? At a university where knowledge is being created. You want to learn from professors who are generating new insights and working with industry. The best universities in the world are research universities—like those in the US and UK. Now, there is a bit of an exodus of professors, researchers, and students from the US, a country that has historically attracted them," says Valdimar. 

He believes it’s also important to share knowledge not only with students but with the public, such as through the media—which he himself has done extensively.