Have you ever purchased more at a grocery store than you intended? Don’t worry if you have, because the layout of your grocery store, from entrance to exit, is designed to encourage impulse spending.
In this article, I will walk you through some of the strategies retailers use to increase spending.
The Decompression Zone in a Grocery Store Layout
As soon as you leave the parking lot and walk through the doors, you must figure how you’re going to carry your groceries—this area is also called the decompression zone, the entrance area where customers adjust to the retail space.
At this point, you have one of two options for carrying your groceries: a basket or cart.
- Choose the basket and fill it up as you go grocery shopping
- Save yourself the trouble of carrying a heavy basket and use a shopping cart.
Though most people prefer a basket when they’re getting just a few things, retail stores favor the use of carts. This is because a cart fits more items and has been shown to increase spending.
When we only have a small quantity of items in our cart, we feel as though we want to fill the empty space (For the same reason we load more foods on bigger plates)
Some mortar retailers in the United States have abandoned shopping baskets altogether. With more space for carrying items comes more spending. Apply this principle to a store like Walmart, which is known for having an endlessly diverse selection of products at low prices, and you’ll find it hard not to purchase more items than you intended.
Fresh Produce Within the Grocery Store Layout
Once you’ve grabbed your cart, you will enter the retail space through a one-way front door that makes it difficult for you to get out again. You then enter the so-called grid layout and are typically greeted with a selection of flowers, fresh produce, and baked goods. The sensory experiences of buckets of tulips, luscious strawberries, and freshly-baked goods have a positive impact on customer behaviors and lead to feeling of happiness and hunger.
The message we get from the produce department is that the store is a place where food is fresh, natural and healthy. While this might the case for certain places, the truth is that fruit and vegetables are often months old.
Research by Martin Lindstrom, a branding expert and author of the book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, shows that the average apple is 14 months old.1
And have you ever noticed that vegetables and fruits in a produce display are presented under good lighting, which makes them appear at their brightest and best? Furthermore, period sprays of water mist do not keep the vegetables fresh, according to Lindstrom, but they aim to boost customer experience as they give vegetables a dewy and fresh-picked look. In fact, the water makes vegetables spoil faster than they otherwise would.
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Shelf Space and Grocery Store Layouts
The food items people purchase on a habitual basis are bread, milk, and eggs. These items are typically located at the very back of the store or in the corners (with the exception of bread, in some cases). If you planned on making a trip to get a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs, you need walk through different aisles and expose yourself to many deals, offers, and discounts the store has to offer. Along the way, you might even come across speed bumps, a ridge set on the floor to make you and your cart slow down and take in your surroundings.
According to the Food Marketing Institute, the average supermarket carries around 44,000 different items (though this number varies by size of the store). So, by the time you’ve reached the end of the store you will have to walked past thousands of different products.
You might walk through the condiments aisle and think, “I could use some Worcestershire sauce for that stir fry I’ve been wanting to make.” As you add the condiment to your cart, you realize that you’re missing some stir fry ingredients, and so you push your cart through different aisles only to buy more than you intended.
Food shopping has become such a repetitive pursuit for most that you might not be aware that shelf order, in and of itself, is also a psychological trap. Overstocked and expensive items are typically placed at eye level and generic products are located on the bottom shelf, which means you have to bend down to get the item.
How Children Are Targeted at Grocery Stores
Take your kids with you, and you face a new challenge. The cereal aisle is a great example of how large stores stock their shelves to appeal to adults and kids alike.
Popular items, such “healthy” cereals with granola or extra protein, are at the top of the shelf, while Fruit Loops and Lucky Charms are positioned in the middle, right at the eye level of children. Kids can grab these cereals themselves or beg their parents to place them in their cart. The bottom shelves are typically filled with bulk cereal items, which retailers want to sell in smaller amounts as they don’t bring the average customer back for several weeks.
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Stay in Control Inside a Grocery Store Layout
There are many more tactics used on you as you navigate the grocery store, and writing about all of them would be beyond the scope of this article. By now, however, I hope that you see that your shopping experience is designed according to consumer research and carefully calibrated to increase impulse buys.
Supermarket psychology drives impulse sales and that’s just how large retailers want it. Educate yourself on topics such as shelf layout, store design, and the concept of freshness, and you’re well on your way to achieve success and control your spending,