Grocery Stores Manipulate Your Mind
How stores get you to buy more than what you intended to
You may think that when you walk into a grocery store you have complete control of what you buy and what you want.
Wrong.
The store itself is trying to convince you to buy as much as possible, but the ways they do it is discreet. Once you start to put the pieces together, however, it becomes apparent that groceries stores may be actively trying to manipulate your mind.
Now these ideas are simply speculation that I am explaining to have a little fun — this is in no way a factual report of a grocery store staff meeting and their legitimate plans to mess with our minds (please don’t sue me Target).
But without further ado, let’s go through the few ways stores might try to manipulate your shopping experience.
Your grocery cart looks a little big, doesn’t it?
When you walk into the store, a lot of people’s first instinct is to grab a cart. Now it’s interesting because the carts are often huge and can fit a bucket load worth of product.
This is exactly what the stores want.
When we start to put only a few items in our cart, the immense size of the cart convinces our mind that we haven’t shopped enough and we need to fill up the cart more. Because of this, we continue to buy things in order to please our mind that we shopped enough so that our cart didn’t look completely empty.
Hmm … that bakery smells really good!
Most grocery stores place a bakery near the front of the store. The fresh aromas of breads, cakes, and other baked goods will get your salivary glands going. And once you start to become more hungry, your chances of impulse sales increase.
Additionally, people love sweet treats. What better way to introduce you to the store than displaying their amazing looking cupcakes and cakes? It’s a good tactic to get your salivary glands going.
Where are all the necessities?
Most people consider things like eggs and milk important items to get from the store. On almost every shopping list my mom writes, we always have to get more milk and eggs.
But have you ever noticed that in most stores, the milk and eggs are always shifted to the very back?
This isn’t just a coincidence. Placing necessities in the back corner of the store causes shoppers to walk through majority of the store before getting to the things they may have come for. When you walk past other aisles and shelves, you probably notice some other items that you want to pick up along the way.
Then, you just add these items to your over-sized shopping cart — but is it enough?
Kids like sugar, right?
You often see little kids running around grocery stores with their parents as well. Big stores with snacks and food all in one place can be exciting for a kid. But little kids are small, and they can only reach so high.
So what do stores do? Put the sugary things on the bottom.
Have you ever noticed that a lot of the candies are placed on the lower shelves in the checkout lines, whereas the more adult focused things like mints, magazines, and gum are placed in a shelf above the checkout conveyor belt?
They aim to position their products in front of who is most likely to buy them. By keeping sugary things at a kid’s eye level and keeping adult focused items at an adult’s eye level, the store is hoping to increase your last minute sales.
This is seen in the store too. In the cereal section, some stores will put the sugary cereals lower down so they are at children’s eye level. Then when you start to look up, the higher shelves may contain things like Raisin Bran and Gluten Free Corn Chex — more commonly eaten by adults.
Sneaky, right?
Pricing
Now this one is seen in all sales, not just grocery stores. But it’s so commonly used that it’s impossible to miss.
I remember when I used to ask my mom why stores would write prices as $5.99 or $9.99 instead of just 6 or 10 dollars.
When you see prices with a .99 after it and you are in a rush, your mind often thinks the first number of the price. So when you see $5.99, rather than immediately thinking 6 dollars, you think the item costs 5 dollars.
Think about it. If you buy three things you think are 4 dollars, you assume you spent $12. But $4.99 is essentially five dollars and you spent closer to $15 dollars with tax.
Now this may seem minimal when looking at individual items. But if you’re in a store and you start to pile more and more products, thinking they’re all a dollar cheaper than they are, your final total is going to add up. The gap only increases the more you buy and the higher the price.
Again, all of these ideas are simply ideas, not fact. But everything in business has to have some techniques to mess with our minds right?
I always like to think of the joke that everyone makes: “I went to the store with my mom to get one thing and we ended up buying half the store”.
It’s funny to think how a dinner table joke is probably the motivational quote for grocery stores when it comes to sales. Now that’s some food for thought.
