Supermarkets use psychology to entice their customers to buy more products. As a customer you often have no idea about this, but it does work. Many customers leave the supermarket with more products than they thought they would get there. Often these are products that you did not really need, but that you saw lying around while passing by and seemed very attractive, or that you have not had in your home for a while. Especially if you go to the store without a shopping note, you run the risk of coming home with products that you did not actually need. How does the supermarket achieve this?
The strategy and psychology of the supermarket
Customers usually come to the supermarket of their choice with a specific goal in mind. Many even have a list for the necessary groceries. Despite this, many customers still leave the store with more products than are on their list. The explanation is simple. Supermarkets have various psychological strategies to entice their customers to purchase multiple products.
Manipulating customers is common
In various ways they manipulate your behavior as a customer to ensure that you walk slower, stop regularly and thus take a better look at the products within your reach and, through the way of presentation, are also tempted to purchase it. Nothing just sits on the shelf. The location of each product has been carefully considered.
Supermarkets are organized efficiently
Supermarkets organize their stores as efficiently as possible. However, this not only concerns the composition of the meat, bread and dairy products, but also the location of the long-life products. This means that the tasty products are always attractively at eye level. The products that everyone only needs occasionally are often very low. Consider, for example, cans of tomato paste, cheap cans of pineapple, and so on. Sauces and soups are usually better visible, because they also earn better money.
Sweet and salty treats are at eye level
Candy, chips, etc. are also approximately at eye level. These are the products that tempt everyone to enjoy good food, sweets, coffee and tea with a tasty cookie. The shelves with the necessary cleaning products, toilet paper, kitchen towels, and the like are usually located at the end of the road through the supermarket. After all, no one can be tempted with that, but even there the position of the various products has been carefully considered.
Supermarkets tempt their customers to walk more slowly
Almost all supermarkets like to set up delay zones. Right at the entrance to the supermarket there are products on offer that attract special attention due to a nice smell (think of bread and pastries), a lower price or something extra. At one supermarket this is a refrigerator section with tasty salads, cold dishes, etc., at another supermarket fresh fruit and vegetables are offered right at the beginning, while a third starts with the offer of beautifully displayed chocolate and chocolates.
The customer slows down
The customer immediately stops by or will at least hold his pass for a moment to look. This ensures that any haste of the customer upon arrival is immediately reduced to a lower point. This immediately prevents the customer from not just running into the store for that one product, taking the product and coming straight to the cash register, but taking the time to look around.
Using certain music with a purpose
The music also consciously influences the customers. For example, a supermarket will never play extremely fast music. Upbeat music with a fast beat will unconsciously make the customer move faster, which will also make them reach the checkout faster. However, the music at the supermarket is designed to induce the customer to calm down and relax, so that they can stroll through the store at their leisure and take the time to look around.
More and more free snacks, tea and coffee
For example, more and more supermarkets are placing slices of sausage on a tray for grabs in the meat department, so that customers can taste them and then hopefully take home an extra pack of that sandwich meat. The same thing often happens in the cheese and bread department. There is also usually a coffee maker ready where the customer can get free coffee or tea. That also slows you down and causes you to stay in the store longer than you intended. There are also often tasty things close to the device that you can take a closer look while drinking and perhaps even take some extra home with you.
A wonderful smell of fresh products
You will usually encounter the smell of freshly baked bread in the bread department. That smell is also part of supermarket psychology. It entices you to spend a longer time in the bread department and to feel more hungry, so that you as a customer may end up taking a little more bread than you originally intended.
Wholesale trial days also try to tempt you
Wholesalers, such as Sligro, sometimes even organize a tasting day before the holidays, on which their customers can taste small portions of various products prepared by chefs. In this way, customers often buy products that they have never purchased before and certainly never tasted.
Pre-cut vegetables and fruit
Convenience serves people and so more and more pre-cut fruit and vegetables are offered in supermarkets. That fruit and vegetables are often several times more expensive than the fresh version. If you also compare the amount of cut lettuce with the amount of lettuce you remove from a head, the difference in price per quantity quickly becomes clear. In addition, the pre-cut vegetables may have been freshly cut, but have already been cut in the light for a number of hours and are less fresh than the intact version.
Offers at the checkout are part of the psychological strategy
You will always find offers at the checkout. That is also a psychological strategy of the supermarket. After all, you sometimes wait there before you are helped and then automatically look around. The tempting offers will then immediately be in your field of vision. Some supermarkets even have a small freezer there, so that ice creams can be offered. Customers who come shopping with children in particular will be more likely to leave the store with an ice cream.
The supermarket’s own brand
Own brand products are always at eye level on the supermarket shelves. The supermarket makes the most money on those products. Branded products are often underneath or completely on top, so the customer has to make an effort to find and grab them.
Pay close attention to the tricks
If you, as a customer, now know what tricks the supermarket is playing on you, you can also do something about it and go your own way. For example, always take a shopping list with you and only buy what is on it. Check out the offers in the brochures at home and only take what is cheaper than usual and what you always use anyway.
Build resistance
Don’t be tempted too quickly by offers of products that you would otherwise never have at home and also look at the bottom of the shelves in the supermarket, because that is where the cheaper products are usually located, which are often of just as good quality as the products at eye level .
Never go shopping on an empty stomach
Never leave hungry. Make sure you go shopping with a full stomach so that you don’t succumb to something tasty too quickly. On an empty stomach, all tasty foods seem even more appealing. You run the risk of buying more than you intended. A full stomach makes it easier to resist tempting foods. This way you can better control your expenses.