Down, down prices are down! No not really! Supermarkets are maximising their profits using clever techniques to entice us in, make us spend more and gaining free word of mouth when we tell our friends and families about the great deal at Coles or Woolworths this week. Loyalty cards are used to cleverly track our spending. Trolleyologist is an actual profession, believe it or not, they analyse our shopping habits and then supermarkets can use this information to cleverly market to us.
Below are the top ten clever ways supermarkets try to fool us once we are in. So next time have a think back to this article and see how many you were fooled by or managed to escape.
Heavily discounted items are placed by the front door to get you excited about saving this will then make you more relaxed and less disciplined throughout the rest of your shop.
Notice how that delicious smelling fresh bread and hot roasting chicken fill the air with that beautiful aroma? This gets the salivary glands working, distracting us, making us more inclined to impulse buy and not stay focused on purchasing items on the shopping list.
Bright colour produce are displayed at the front (e.g. fruit and veg) this will put you in a positive happy mood, inspiring you to purchase more. Cardboard boxes and boring tin cans are all placed in the middle of the supermarket.
Supermarkets are using tactics such as bigger Shopping carts. This is to make you think that you haven’t bought much yet, so it will make you think you need to purchase more, filling up your trolley, maximising your sales.
Shop on a Monday or Tuesday if you can as these are the quietest times and you can focus more and not be influenced as easily by marketing techniques. Weekends are the busiest so we tend to want to get in and get out therefore falling for those sneaky marketing ploys.
End of aisle products, are normally sold to supermarkets and will create the maximum profits for them. Walk around the corner with your eyes closed, be careful not to bump into anyone, but these products are not normally the best deal, and they are placed away from their competitors so you can’t easily price match. Sometimes they aren’t even on special they are just under big signage that makes them look like they are.
Supermarkets also place costly products at eye level so children in trolleys can easily grab, or you can just grab as you are walking down the aisle. Look for the cheaper alternatives, higher up or lower down.
Additionally, serving sizes are getting smaller however because it is a regular product we purchase we don’t tend to take much notice that the price is still the same, see our shrinkflation article.
Statistics state items priced at 90, 95, 99 are more likely to be purchased because we read left to right we see the numbers before the decimal points and not worry about the numbers after. I tend to disagree, if I see $49.99 I see $50 not $49. I can believe this for high priced products e.g. houses or cars, if you see a house marked at $299,000 you will think you have purchased a house for less than $300,000. Rounded prices apparently show high end – if you are worried about the cents it’s a way for the marketer to say move on you can’t afford to shop here.
Cleverly, supermarkets are designed in a rat run formation, we feel the need to walk up and down the aisles therefore giving marketers more opportunity to put promotional products right in front of our eyes. Also natural behaviour is to turn right when entering a supermarket.
But it’s not just supermarkets that use they sneaky manipulative techniques. Restaurants tend to overprice one item on the menu, this way they can then up the price of all the other menu items because they will always seem cheaper compared to the overpriced product. Stay alert, stay focused and reduce the chance of being manipulated.