On behalf of Kurt Hofer and Jonas Smietana for the Dreh und Trink brand, we spent a semester investigating how children influence shopping behavior at the point of sale and how brands and retailers can improve the shopping experience of parents and children in supermarkets. After intensive desk research, a store check in 25 sales outlets of 5 different types and shopper shadowing, during which we observed a total of 182 interactions between children and their shopping companions, the results have now been presented to our client. The findings: children pursue surprisingly creative strategies to achieve their goals. We also analysed how parents react to this and when in the shopping process the chances of success for a child's purchase suggestion are particularly high.

Many thanks to the Dreh und Drink management for challenging us with such an interesting task and to all the students for their good ideas, commitment to fieldwork and dedicated presentation and discussion of the findings. I really enjoy seeing the great results that student consultants' out-of-the-box thinking produces every semester!