How supermarkets trick us: 10 tricks to know about

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

These tricks from marketers make you spend money on things you didn't intend to buy.

1. Awakening appetite

The senses are the most active allies of marketers. How many times have they told the world: “Don't go to the shops hungry!”, Because the more you want to eat, the more unnecessary you will buy. But even if you're not hungry, supermarkets have a variety of ways to whet your appetite.

For example, the smell of fresh baked goods has proven to be excellent: it tempts the buyer to spend more. Correctly exposed lighting works well: the products on the showcase look festively bright, juicy and exciting.

But one of the most powerful ways to induce salivation and the accompanying urge to buy something to chew on is free tasting samples. Firstly, they smell, beckon and you want to buy them. Secondly, having treated yourself for free, you begin to feel obligated to thank the store. If you didn't get this sausage for tasting, you would not even remember about it. And now you have it in your basket. And, of course, in the check.

2. Hypnosis with music

Heard cheerful music in the supermarket - turn on attentiveness to the maximum. Melodies are launched at a fast pace where it is important to increase the number of sales. A study by the American Marketing Association, Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers, proves that energetic music provokes shoppers to buy spontaneously.

Unconsciously adjusting to the driving pace, we put more expensive goods in the cart, and even in larger quantities.

On the other hand, slow music is a gimmick too. Stores specially select compositions with a rhythm that is much slower than the average heart rate. This makes people stay longer at the shelves, spend more time in the sales area and, as a result, buy more. And more by almost 30% - so, in particular, assures the American marketing consultant and author of the book Brain Removal! How marketers manipulate our minds and make us buy what they want”Martin Lindstrom.

To protect yourself from such influences from music, shop with headphones on.

3. Color scheme

People are "drawn" into shops, the walls and entrance of which from the outside are painted in warm colors: red, orange, yellow. But inside the color situation is changing: cold shades in the interior - blue and green - make customers spend more. CNN, citing a study on How color affects your spending, published in Business Review, claims that stores decorated in blue-green shades have customers leaving 15% more money than those whose walls and shelves are painted in warm colors.

4. Discount cards and loyalty programs

Do you think that discount cards are made for your savings? I must admit, this is partly true. But not all of them. The store saves on loyalty card holders much more for a number of reasons.

The discount card links you to a specific supermarket

Choosing between two completely identical stores, you will probably go to the one where you have a loyalty program.

The map is watching you

That is, it gives the store information about your shopping habits. What price category do you prefer meat? How often do you buy dog food? Do you like chocolate or, for example, fermented milk desserts?

Thanks to the card, the supermarket knows everything about your expenses and gets the opportunity to influence them.

If you have ever received individual offers like “Buy chocolate for 300 rubles and get a 15% discount”, you know what I mean. Of course, the offer seems to be profitable. But it is profitable first of all for the store, which promoted you to buy more sweets than you are used to.

The card provokes you to spend more

Many supermarkets award points for every ruble spent on their network. Later, these points can be converted into money by paying off the accumulated points at the checkout. Is it profitable? On the one hand, yes. On the other hand, you yourself do not notice how the store forces you to spend more in order to accumulate more cherished charges.

5. Lure goods

"Buy 10 pieces for only 100 rubles!" is a good old marketing gimmick. Many people fall for such an offer, as a result, buying more products than they need.

There are also more subtle manipulations. The store offers some popular product at a really good price. For example, meat in the barbecue season or a large pack of brand name diapers. This is the bait.

A profitable product is actively advertised to get shoppers to look into a particular supermarket. But if you have already entered the trading floor for meat or diapers, why not buy something else? It is on these accompanying purchases that the store makes the checkout.

The profit that he loses on the bait is paid off by the extra money that customers leave in the supermarket.

6. Complementary products

You walk into the store for a pack of your child's favorite crackers. And next to it, on the same rack, you find children's chocolate and marshmallows. "Oh, how in the subject!" - you think and throw all three products into the basket. This is how these combinations work.

Some combos are obvious, like shampoo and conditioner. Some are thinner, such as disposable plastic plates and pretty paper napkins. It seems to us that we decided to buy the napkins ourselves. In fact, your supposedly spontaneous purchase was predicted in advance.

If your hand reaches for a product that you did not plan to buy a second ago, just ask yourself: "Do I really need this?"

Leinbach Reile author of Retail 101 and co-founder of the American Conference of Independent Retailers

7. Packaging in which food deteriorates quickly

Fresh bread is often sold in a paper bag. Beautiful? Fact. But not practical: bread in such a package will dry out quickly, and you will have to go to the store again. This is also one of the marketing gimmicks. Therefore, after returning from the supermarket, try to repack your purchases so that they remain fresh for as long as possible.

8. Goods with added value

Supermarkets play with prices, raising to eye level those products that you especially want to sell, and lowering inexpensive goods that are unprofitable for the store almost to the floor level. The "magic nine" effect is widespread, when a product with a price of 199 rubles seems to be a more profitable purchase to buyers than a product for 200 rubles.

Products are sold well, explaining to customers why they should be taken. For example, a product may be labeled with the icon "Grown in our area, which means it will bring profit to our farmers." Sales of Local Foods Reaches $ 12 Billion research shows that buyers are willing to pay up to 25% more for these products.

Another option is products with recipes that can be prepared from them. They seem to buyers to be more practical, and therefore the level of their sales is higher.

9. Reusable branded eco-bags

Eco-friendly reusable bags instead of bags - an ingenious marketing gimmick! First, they are branded: retail chains place their logos on them, turning customers into walking ads. Secondly, they make customers feel trust in the supermarket: "Well, hey, he cares about the environment!" And thirdly, they increase the average check.

Harvard Business School published a BYOB study: How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself, and the Environment, proving shoppers with branded eco-bags spend more. Imbued with concern for nature, they first give preference to more expensive natural and organic products, and then, already at the checkout, they stock up on unhealthy products - as a reward for their own virtue.

10. Counters at the cash registers

At the checkout, marketers place expensive and not always necessary little things: chocolates, jelly candies in brightly colored packages, ice cream, wet wipes, hand sanitizer gels, condoms, and so on. The expectation is that you, tired of making decisions on the trading floor, relax at the checkout and buy yourself (or no less tired than you, a child) a reward. And it works.

Little things on the counters at the checkout lines can be considered the store's concern for the customer: so you might forget that you need wet wipes, and here they are! But if you went back to the trading floor, you would find similar napkins at a price one and a half times lower. It is inconvenient to return, so you buy goods at an inflated price, once again becoming a supplier of the "golden fleece" for stores.