  Much of economic theory is built on observations of aggregate, rather than
individual, behavior. Here, we present novel findings on human shopping
patterns at the resolution of a single purchase. Our results suggest that much
of our seemingly elective activity is actually driven by simple routines. While
the interleaving of shopping events creates randomness at the small scale, on
the whole consumer behavior is largely predictable. We also examine
income-dependent differences in how people shop, and find that wealthy
individuals are more likely to bundle shopping trips. These results validate
previous work on mobility from cell phone data, while describing the
unpredictability of behavior at higher resolution.
