
Let Game Theory Tell You When It’s Time to Go Shopping - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/let-game-theory-tell-you-when-its-time-to-go-shopping
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Wingman4l7
Pre-Covid, a good trick for the non-religious or non-Christian person who
lived in areas of the South with regular church attendees was to go early
Sunday morning, when people were at religious services. The only issue was if
you wanted to pick up alcohol and you lived in areas with blue laws, you'd be
stymied since you were shopping before noon.

Might still work now if churches are hosting regular web-based worship, but I
don't know.

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siberianbear
You would think there should be some sort of reward in the form of saved time
from going to the supermarket at an unpopular time. But my closest supermarket
changes the staffing levels at checkout to coincide with the level of
shoppers. So, I spend the same amount of time in line no matter when I go.

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cocoa19
Lots of grocery stores in the US have a bunch of self checkout lanes and only
2-3 cashier lanes. Walmart, target, Kroger, Lowe's Foods, etc.

It does help if you go when there's low traffic.

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marshmellman
Where I live (Seattle), a portion of the self-checkout lanes are also closed
to coincide with the level of shoppers. I was told that this is because of
labor unions - basically it guarantees work for the cashiers.

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YetAnotherMatt
One more factor I would recommend to take into account is when the store
restocks.

For where I live, the supermarket I usually go to always restocks Tuesday
mornings, sometimes on Thursday mornings.

This may be a bit selfish, but I always go on Tuesday morning 10AM and it has
not been crowded do far, and I've had zero issues with needing repeated trips
due to groceries being out of stock.

EDIT: One would expect it to be busier right after / during restocking, but
that has not been the case at all. Maybe the supermarket has an incentive to
restock during the least busy times or people have not caught on in general
yet.

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dugditches
Talking to people working in retail I keep hearing the same thing:

People are bored. Often see the same people coming in several times a week,
buying random stuff and browsing the shelves. Standing in line outside stores
for 30 minutes just to buy a few knickknacks.

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Loughla
I was a retail manager for 6 years while I finished grad school and post doc
work. It was eye opening for me.

Many, many of the elderly people who came to the store were there almost every
day, and were there just for the human interaction.

It genuinely made me sad that there wasn't a better outlet, or an outlet that
wasn't based on the consumption of nonsense goods.

~~~
vharuck
Even if there were a local place or activity for socializing, going to a
retail store during the day is a good move. Clerks won't have many people
competing for their attention and the clerk-customer roles make it easy to
break the ice. The clerk will realize this isn't a sales discussion but is
probably happy to shoot the breeze, anyway. Shopping at a store gives a very
nice framework for casual conversation.

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renw0rp
Considering that most people in the UK get up late and prefer to queue up
around noon or in the evening/afternoon you don't need any maths to figure out
that you just need to go when the store opens. So far going between 6am and
8am has been successful for me.

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sevencolors
I've found going right after lunch hours during the "work week". Basically
2-3pm on Tue/Wed has been the sweet spot for me. Store is restocked after
weekend and folks are not there during their lunch time.

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heavenlyblue
This. You can do the game theory alright, but statistically speaking there are
many more people who are constrained by their working hours to go to the shop
during either lunchtime (12:00-13:00) or just after 18:00.

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newstorkcity
From what I understand, this is arguing that we should be collectively doing
this in order to limit overcrowding, this method is not very helpful as an
individual. If based on past trends it is overcapacity at 2:00 and under
capacity at 4:00, as and individual you shouldn't expect that to change and
should always go at 4:00.

Without a prescription for how many people want to go at a given time, you
can't really make use of this information. If every body was following this
rule, there ought to never be overcrowding, so you could never know this
information by using past data. So you would need to use a sign up or polling
method to figure out. If using a sign up, you could just set a cap on how many
people can sign up so you don't need randomness. If using polling then this
method could be helpful.

Though another issue with this model is assuming a fixed positive utility from
going when overcrowded and a fixed negative utility when overcrowded. In
reality the fewer people the higher utility, plus each individual has
different utility based on what time they are going. Taking all this into
account, I feel like the only reasonable approach is what is already done, go
to the store during a convenient time for you that is the least busy based on
passed data. If everyone does this, we should expected to reach a happy
equilibrium (sans unexpected upsets, such as the recent rushes before lock
downs).

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wahern
> I feel like the only reasonable approach is what is already done, go to the
> store during a convenient time for you that is the least busy based on
> passed data.

But people don't have good data--you'd have to go at random times for weeks or
months to have a sense of the best times. And in any event people don't invest
much effort in this. We're not rational beings. We systematically
underestimate the value of collecting and applying such data, just as we
systematically overestimate the value of other things. Not to mention the
collective action problem in maximizing total social benefit.

Supermarkets need to lower the cost of information aggregation. They could
prominently display at the entrance and at checkout lanes a simple graph of
customer traffic so that people could instantly, freely know how to avoid the
crowds. But this might have to be mandated by law as they otherwise have very
little perceived incentive to do this. Even though the cost is trivial,
businesses aren't perfectly rational actors any more than humans are. Anyhow,
trivial isn't zero, especially when the returns are uncertain. It will take a
significant external push to move away from their local optimum solution--
managing crowds by adjusting the number of cashiers.

~~~
newstorkcity
Google will report how busy some business are on an hour by hour basis, I
assume based on anonymous phone locations collected. If google covers the
business you want to go to that would solve the coordination problem.

I'm not sure how to make google show this information. Usually I can just look
up "[business] hours" and it will give me the plot, it might not be showing
that information right now due to low activity because of the lock down.

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ulucs
Using a job market matching model would be more appropriate for this, seeing
that each hour is associated with an convenience level (a la wages) and
disutility from crowding.

However economics is about studying equilibria, not finding recipes for what
to do. Just check Google Maps for crowding levels if you need to go to the
supermarket, or request a queue status indicator to be put into the market's
website.

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antman
I kind of missed on what was solved when he switched to a text description.

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jmkerr
Expect airborne virus to follow Google Maps 'busy time' graphs, and surface
virus to be the exponentially weighed integrated busy time. Be careful around
people that appear to be suffocating. No need for maths or game theory, just
common sense.

