Supermarket shopping is a contact sport for Betty.  Watch me and you’ll see me make a dash past the fresh fruit and veg, straight to the budget lines.  It’s not that we don’t eat fruit and veg.  To the contrary.  But we certainly don’t buy it at Third World (you probably know it as New World). Nor do we buy meat.  Fruit and veg are bought outside of Devonport because it’s sometimes half the price. More about that in another post.  This one’s about Trolleyology:

So you just need to buy two things at the supermarket? Fat chance. Walk through that door and the marketing men have got you by the short and curlies. One false move, it was once said, and your bill explodes.

Nothing you encounter on your weekly food shop is accidental, from the bakery smells pumped into the entranceway to the placing of higher-margin baked beans at eye level. That’s thanks to supermarket psychology, or trolleyology as it’s dubbed in the United States.

These days psychologists, retail geographers , and food marketing experts pour over ever last inch of supermarkets looking how to extract more moolah out of you.  Your every move in the supermarket is choreographed, says consumer psychologist Dr David Lewis. Generally speaking the most expensive items with high profit margins are placed on shelves that are at shoppers’ eye level. Powerful companies such as Proctor and Gamble and Kimberley-Clark actually pay a premium to snatch these shelves.  So if you’re shopping for nappies, Huggies will be at eye level and Budget brand white el cheapo nappies will be somewhere around your feet.

Am I being cynical?

Lewis who has spent 15 years analysing how we buy says: “nothing is left to chance.”  You’ll find that the width of the aisles are planned so that you are prevented from bumping into other people, but aren’t too wide so you can’t get you hands on products. Composers even spend their lives writing music designed to entice shoppers to buy more goods.

Products are often grouped together to entice you to buy more, Lewis adds.  You’ll often find pasta sauces on the same display as a featured brand of pasta.

How do they do this?

The supermarkets have vast amounts of data about our shopping habits from point of sale, loyalty card databases and also market research data that is given to psychologists and the retail geographers to create an optimum store layout.

How can you beat them at their own game?

The best defence against inflated supermarket bills is preparation. Put simply, you should always shop on a full stomach, go with a list, only buy sale items and offers and visit at the time of the day when fresh produce is discounted. Many experts say you should plan your meals for a week at a time and only buy items you need for your menu plan. But I’m supremely organised, yet I couldn’t stick to that and I don’t know anyone who could.