How grocery stores trick you into spending more money

Every part of a grocery store is designed to make you spend more money with psychological tips that manipulate you to buy more than you need, from increasing cart size to putting produce at the front, supermarkets spend tons of money making sure their customers spend theirs. 

From the moment you pull into the driveway of your local grocery store to pick up just a few items to the moment you drive away with a trunk filled with items you didn’t even know you needed, you have unknowingly been bombarded with physiological tricks that kept you filling up your cart. 

Customers may go to the store for one carton of eggs and find themselves picking up ice cream, bread, a magazine and plenty more items they didn’t even need. 

Grocery stores have become retail nirvana with their tricks that make

Tailoring the appearance of products so you are more inclined to spend money 

First up is the appearance of products, specifically the flowers and produce. 

When a customer first walks into a grocery store, they are greeted with colorful flowers, freshly baked bread and fresh produce – all of which activate the salivary glands and put customers in a good mood. 

The scents from the flowers, fresh food and warm bread will make customers hungrier then they were when they walked in, which will cause them to spend even more money.

Furthermore, the produce is sprayed with a mist, which actually causes them to rot faster, because the stores know if a food item looks fresh and dewy customers are more likely to purchase them. 

Brands sold at the supermarkets even try to put children in a good mood. 

If you look closely you’ll see that almost every mascot on cereal boxes are looking down, this is to make eye contact with little kids. 

Grocery stores will place these cereal boxes at a place they can ensure the mascots will look down to the children in hopes that the little kids begging their parents for them.  

And the last thing supermarkets want you to worry about while shopping is the amount of money you’re spending, which is why they shrink the dollar signs on the price tags to try to get rid of the concept of money altogether. 

Strategically placing products so that you buy the most expensive option

By placing produce and the healthy foods at the front of the store, supermarkets are relying on customers to reward themselves for picking healthy items at the start of their errand run and purchase less healthy, but more expensive foods in their cart later. 

Prepared food is next to the healthy food for the same reason, grocery stores are counting on you to reward yourself for your healthy picks. 

And by playing soothing music the stores try to further put you in a good mood and ensure you take your time while shopping. 

Grocery stores even want you to feel good while checking out which is why they place so many ‘reward’ items like chocolate, magazines and other candies around the register. 

Another way to manipulate you into spending more time making choices is to strategically place items. 

Brands will often pay extra money to be stocked at eye-level, this is because ‘eye-level is buy level’. 

This is also why name brands are placed at eye-level, healthy and niche items are placed at the the and the best deals are placed at the bottom. 

By putting brands you’ll recognize and the most expensive brands at eye-level, supermarkets are hoping you’ll grab the first thing you see and won’t even notice the deals. 

Associated products are also stocked together, such as peanut butter next to bread and kids toys next to diapers, to make customers more likely to buy more items. 

Popular products are stocked in the middle, forcing customers to pass other products, making them question if they need anything else and ultimately place other items in their cart. 

Bigger shopping carts to make customers buy more products and spend more money

 Most grocery stores are designed to make you spend more time in them. 

And it starts with shopping carts. 

Big shopping carts force customers to buy more because they aren’t worried about overfilling their carts. 

Shopping carts in supermarkets have tripled in size since the 70s because stores know customers will continue to place item after item in their cart no matter how big they get. 

This trick makes it easier steroids for sale UK customers to make larger purchases, thus resulting in them buying more items they don’t need. 

Stores do this by giving customers many different choices, whether it’s 25 different types of honey or 10 different kinds of peanut butter, stores are forcing you to make decisions, despite the many choices. 

Seasonal items are always scattered around the store and this isn’t a coincidence, stores do this as a mental speed bump. 

It forces you to slow down and make a choice, just like an overwhelming amount of product choices does

How the layout of a store affects your wallet 

Most grocery stores are designed to resemble Hotel California in the way that they are incredibly easy to enter and almost impossible to leave. 

And this isn’t an accident, customers are instructed to go in one way and leave another, meaning to leave you’ll have to either go through practically every aisle and shop or if you decide you don’t want anything, you’ll have to either limbo under or climb over the lines of people who have fallen victim to the psychological tricks. 

This mayhem causes customers to spend even more time in the store, which causes them to buy more. 

One trick supermarkets use is placing the items counter-clockwise. This is because shoppers spend more money if they move in the same direction they drive. 

The items that are often placed on the end of the aisles are the holy grail of marketing. 

The displays on the end of aisles often sell at a rate of eight times faster than products inside aisles and are placed at the end as opportunities to tempt customers to buy more items they don’t need.

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