How Groceries Stores Manipulate You
Written By : Courtney Van Dusen
Have you every realized the design
of the grocery store? Wonder why the soda brands are next to the chips, or why gum
and candy bars are placed right next to the checkout area? These are only a few
of the many tactics grocery stores use in order to persuade consumers to buy
more than what they intended to.
When checking out items, how many
times do children ask their parents for a Kit Kat bar, or any kind of candy
that lies right in front their faces? The items placed in front of the counter
are called impulse items, these are the things people do not need but feel as
if, “Oh it is only a dollar or so, nothing hurt”, but these little impulses
build into a hefty profit for the store. Impulse buys are what grocery stores go
off of when designing and placing specific items in to it. Another example is
the placement of flowers or the bakery in the front of some stores, by using
your senses of sight (seeing the
colorful flowers) and smell (fresh baked bread and cookies), this allows for
the consumer to at least think about buying these delectable products placed oh so perfectly in
front of them.
Video: http://youtu.be/NZca5-bkKYw
Other procedures used are ones that
include two different products, but they are often consumed together. Soda and
chips are a great example for this. “A
team of researchers, including Coleman Chair Professor in Marketing Venkatesh
Shankar” looked as the sales of chips and soda over 2.5 years and within 180
different stores. After moving the chips an aisle closer toward the soda, both
sales increased by 0.7 percent and after moving the item farther away from the
soda aisle, the sales decreased about 1.4 percent. Lastly, after placing the
chips and the sodas in the same aisle, and facing each other, sales of both
items increased to a 9.2 percent. These percents prove that the grocery store,
and how they present the produce, can manipulate consumers into buying more
than needed. Also, these increases in profit are common with a price-cut
promotion just without any loss in profit, so basically, it is unnecessary to
cut any prices on any product or service in order for customers to buy more.
This information can not only help
profits for stores but manufactures for all of their revenues. Expressing how
integrated marketing of certain items, such as soda and chips can increase
sales leading to certain companies to own products in multiple categories. A
company that is familiar to most and follows by this idea is PepsiCo, owner of
Pepsi beverages and Frito-Lays snacks.
The typical factors that influence
the purchasing of products are the demand by the consumers and the supply of
the company, but the effect of placements and sense stimulants are big causes
as well. By placing impulse and commonly purchased items in specific areas of
the grocery store, sales are able to increase, and consumers will leave with
more than proposed.
Works Cited
"Five
Ways Grocery Stores Try to Trick You | Rodale News." Rodale News.
N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct. 2013.
<http://rodalenews.com/supermarkets-and-healthy-food>.
Houston,
Chrystal. " Store shelf strategy |
Mays Business Online." Mays Business Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct.
2013. <http://Maysbusiness.tamu.edu/index.php/store-shelf-strategy/>.
Courtney, the first paragraph of your writing is a good starting point but seems a little jumbled with sentence structure. Some thoughts seem cut off, lingering in sentences that seemed overdrawn. In terms of the entire post, you have some great points that you are able to elaborate with but with analysis leads to some loss of direction. Try to stay focused with what the sentence/paragraph is addressing and smoothly transition to the next topic. What you said is true, I can't say how many times I bought that extra candy bar or that pack of gum while standing in line for the register. It's a common tactic that doesn't seem like it's going to fade away any time soon. Your evidence related to the topic and you were able to appropriately incorporate them into your writing to strengthen your argument. You are a strong writer but as everyone else sometimes does, there are a few structural things that you need to be careful about so that you don't confuse the reader and possibly alter your message as a whole.
ReplyDeleteSarah, please keep in mind that I am looking for you to add to the economic debate, not critique the strength of the writing.
DeleteThis is a very interesting topic involving economics. I think it's clever that grocery stores strategically place their products in order to catch the attention of their customers. I believe that this tactic is very beneficial to grocery stores and probably contributes to at least half of their sales. Although it may seem annoying to the customers, these tactics help maintain these grocery stores and keep the economy flowing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting topic. The introduction was really good at and all of the examples worked very good at relating this topic to everyone. The companies and stores are smart to use this information and I definitely would use these statistics to increase my revenue as well if I were one of those companies. Some of the companies can gain too much power by using these technique, like you said with Pepsi-Co. Even between specific products companies can have a very large amount of control.
ReplyDelete