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Super Markets have their supermarket marketing strategies down to a science. Mankind as consumers have been studied and examined for many years now. The stores know the ins and outs of how we buy, what we buy, and most importantly, how to get us to buy. The floor plan is thought out carefully so that to buy the high priority items that are bought per household on the regular (milk, meat, cheese, bread, beer, wine) it takes a walk around a good percentage of the store. Super markets know that as people walk around they will see other items that they will impulsive want to buy.
Super markets have commercials on TV, and now they have ads for products that are scattered around their stores. Markets are now using large sticker ads that are just stuck down on the floor displaying a brand name. Then there are coupons that you can pick up while shopping, some coupons are directly next to the item it’s used for. If the coupon can be grabbed WITH the item, why isn’t the price of the item just lowered? It’s the same thing. Another pitfall of shopping is the supposed “sales” that are posted around the store. Just because an item says that it is marked down or you can buy 2 for 5 dollars or 4 for 10 doesn’t mean that it is any better of a deal then just buying one of that same product. It is a well known fact that the longer a person spends in a grocery store the higher the chance of buying things that you were not originally planning on buying. The biggest pitfall of super market shopping is the hunger factor. If you are hungry while shopping there will be a much larger amount of items that appeal to you. Stores will often have fresh smells like bread or cooked chicken lingering in the air around meal times to kick start peoples appetites and get them to spend a little bit more.
1 comments:
I enjoyed reading your blog as many of the points you raised, reiterated what I have recently read in two articles. One titled ‘Trolley psychology’ by Kate Browne and the other titled ‘The supermarket as selling machine’ sourced from Consumer Reports.
In the article ‘Trolley psychology,’ Kate Browne outlines that supermarkets put millions of dollars into the study of consumer behaviour to sequentially ‘develop tactics to compel (consumers) to buy more in their stores’ (Browne 2010, p. 1).
Some of the ways in which Browne believes marketers do this is by; locating the milk and the bread at the very back of the store and often at opposite ends, placing last minute temptations at the checkout and placing ‘like’ items, such as coffee and biscuits close to one another in the aisles.
Another marketing tactic that Browne mentions is colour. In the article, Browne describes why red, green, blue and yellow/gold are the most commonly used colours in supermarket products and packaging. Browne also describes why marketers want consumers to think that they are in a marketplace visiting ‘several different stores rather than a single big shop’ (Browne 2010, p. 2).
Browne incorporates biological traits, such as which way consumers walk when they enter the store, the most common path they take, the region in which they look at a shelve and how ‘supermarkets really capitalise’ on these traits.
In the article ‘Supermarket as selling machine,’ Consumer Reports explain how coupons can actually leave consumers spending more. Consumer Report states that ‘when manufacturers offer coupons for high-profit impulse items like peanuts or a new rice mix, people buy 50 percent more than they would if the product wasn’t promoted’ (Consumer Reports 1993, p. 560). Consumer Reports also mentions that coupons make consumers believe that they are getting a bargain but really marketers are just trying to get consumers ‘to buy products (they) wouldn’t ordinarily buy’ (Consumer Reports 1993, p. 560)
Reference List
Browne, K 2010, ‘Trolley psychology: Choice unlocks the psychological secrets of the supermarket and shows you how to avoid spending more than you mean to’, Choice, Australasian Consumers’ Association, Chippendale, NSW, Australia, no.4, April, p.60, retrieved 11 May 2011, Expanded Academic database
Consumer Reports 1993, ‘The Supermarket as selling machine’, vol. 58, no. 9, retrieved 11 May 2011, < http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=654b1115-ad77-4bd8-bba3-5fa1b58b386d%40sessionmgr10&vid=5&hid=17>
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