Supermarkets are very skilled at getting us to spend money. Here are just some of the ways they do that without you realising.
1. You can check out but you might struggle to leave. Checkout lanes not being used are very often blocked off with very severe “no exit signs”. That is because once we are in their shops, supermarkets would quite like us to buy things and don’t make it easy to leave without passing the tills.
2. They put a lot of time, effort and money into how the shops are laid out. First we see all the lovely fruit, vegetables, bread and flowers because bright colours lift our spirits and a happy shopper is a spendy shopper. The sight and smell of the bread makes us hungry and a hungry shopper is a spendy shopper. And if we put all the wholesome stuff into our trolley first, we are more likely to buy the less healthy stuff as we continue our shopping journey.
3. Milk is always at the back of the shop. That means it has to travel shorter distances between trucks and refrigerators which makes sense. But it is also among the most frequently bought products and one of only a handful of things known as “destination items”. We go in to buy milk but the supermarkets make us walk through the shop in order to reach the dairy section so they can tempt us with the rest of what they have on offer.
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4. Retailers place the products they most want us to buy at eye level. The sometimes better value – and more often than not cheaper – products are to be found higher and lower down. Supermarkets also charge suppliers more for the best positions but we end up paying the price.
5. Conveyor belts are longer than they used to be because psychologically that makes us feel better about our shopping experience and, as a result, more likely to return. And how does that work? Well, we reckon loading our stuff on to the belt means we are nearly at the end of the trip while standing in line with our shopping still in the trolley is quite exasperating.
6. Supermarkets like to funnel us through narrow corridors free of shelf space because they don’t want to give us the opportunity to discard things we decide, on mature recollection, we don’t need as we wait in line. If you can’t find a shelf to dump that multipack of chocolatey treats you might as well buy them, is how they think we think. And they are not wrong.
7. Supermarket trolleys and baskets keep getting bigger and bigger because there is evidence that the bigger the trolley, the more we spend. If a retailer increases the size of their shopping trolleys by 100 per cent, people buy 20 per cent more.
8. Retailers push us into buying more – and bigger – multipacks not because they want to offer us more value but because they want us to consume more. If a six-pack of a fizzy drink becomes a 12-pack, people will drink considerably more of it.
9. Two-for-one deals rarely work in your favour and shoppers who choose two-for-one deals buy anywhere between 30 and 100 per cent more than they planned.
10. You still see sweets at tills but you also see glossy magazines and gadgets – the stuff you don’t need but might buy because you are bored queuing.
11. The reason the treat – and the booze – aisles are near the end of the route which the supermarket wants you to take is because by then you’re frazzled and bored by the shopping so more inclined to reward yourself.
12. Grocery staples – meats, vegetables, bread, milk, butter, eggs cereals and cleaning products – are as far apart as possible so you walk through the entire shop to reach them all.
