Quickly buy a pack of pasta or rice in the supermarket? Or just get a quick something for dinner? That’s not always possible. In the supermarket, customers are tempted to buy more. FOCUS Online calls the industry’s psycho tricks so that you can save better.
Supermarkets, discounters and department stores carry out purchase analyzes again and again. In many cases, businesses pay attention to how customers walk through the store, which shortcuts they take and which shelves they spend a long time in front of. Tests are always carried out using sensors, gaze analyses, walking studies and time recordings.
This data is then used to implement the shopping tricks in order to seduce consumers. If you fall for the psycho tricks, you end up spending more on your shopping cart.
“The smallest changes influence the buying behavior of customers,” says an expert who equips supermarkets with shelves, cash registers and shopping trolleys. “It’s all about arrangement, routes, colors and prices,” he explains.
For example, the shopping carts have a sloping bottom. Customers never place their purchases in the front of the car. They impulsively put the purchases down in such a way that they are secured against falling out by the back. Anyone who pushes the trolley through the store directs their gaze to the shelves and generally to the front.
Because the purchased groceries are not always visible, this tempts people to go shopping. “The customer forgets that he may have already bought the most important groceries,” says the expert.
If you only want to buy a little something, you should never take a shopping trolley with you into the branches. Basically, consumers with shopping trolleys spend more money at Aldi Süd, Aldi Nord, Lidl, Rewe, Edeka and Co.
The aim of the traders is to drastically reduce the running speed. Anyone who comes across special offers, displays or rummage tables in the store usually stops. The gaze wanders not only to the special campaign products, but to all the shelves that are nearby.
Stand-up displays with advertising faces are particularly popular when slowing down the speed. Laughing people attract, are rated as “positive” and customers memorize the advertising and the product better.
The more time customers spend at Aldi Süd, Aldi Nord, Rewe, Lidl, Netto Marken-Discount and Co., the more goods end up in the shopping cart.
If you want to save, you should use a shopping list. The order is important. Ideally, think as the food stands. Fruit and vegetables are often found at the entrance, followed by non-perishable foods, then wine and then the deep-freeze counter.
You should also skilfully ignore such obstacles as display stands or rummage tables and only concentrate on groceries that you really want to buy. Those who stroll, observe or let themselves be carried away by the offers end up spending more money on their purchases.
Can you tell in five seconds where butter, eggs, milk and yeast are in your supermarket? Usually the answer is “no”. In principle, supermarkets are designed in such a way that foods that are bought more frequently are well hidden inside the store.
Supermarkets are unlikely to place a display or special offer near milk or mineral water. That’s understandable. Those who want to buy important everyday groceries usually ignore surrounding products.
For this reason, branches work in such a way that customers with lures can reach these important everyday foods more slowly. This trick lends to impulse purchases, which account for the vast majority of a supermarket’s sales.
You also have to go through at least 40 percent of the store floor to get to these products. The way to the checkout is also made more difficult because there are no “quick shortcuts”. There is a good chance that customers will have additional groceries, drugstore items or non-food products in their shopping carts in the meantime.
Aldi, Lidl, Penny and Netto Marken-Discount are using every means possible to provoke customers to detour to the non-food department. As soon as you get there, household items, clothing or promotional items end up in your shopping cart. Such detours are supported with cheap groceries and drugstore items that are only a few steps away.
Supermarkets and discounters repeatedly rely on so-called impulse offers that invite people to buy. Actually you don’t need the products, in the end you buy them. Stores are thinking about how they can make the best possible use of buying behavior driven by emotions.
In the summer months there are more and more diet and light products on sale. In the spring sunscreen is already prominently sold in displays and when rain is in the offing, drugstores are happy to place umbrellas in the entrance area. The best example is gingerbread, which can already be bought in October.
Supermarket prices are skyrocketing, but we consumers also have to dig deeper into our pockets for electricity, petrol, furniture and clothing. What did you observe? What do you do to save money each month for yourself and your family? Send an e-mail to Konstantinos.mitsis@burda-forward.de with your name and telephone number
