Supermarkets want us to get the best deals and save lots of money. They only want what’s best for us, right? Wrong. Although they can give us what seems like great discounts from time to time, they are still big businesses and their top priority is to get us to spend as much as possible using sneaky psychological supermarket tricks. In fact:
Environmental psychologist, Paco Underhill, in their book “What Women Want: The Science of Female Shopping”, claims that up to 50% of our shopping cart are things we never intended to buy in the first place! We’ve all been there. We only go to the supermarket for milk and bread but come out with enough to feed a small family for a week.
How does this happen?
Well, there’s a whole arsenal of supermarket tricks out there. Grocery stores use them to make sure we spend as much as possible. There are plenty of studies and websites that list these dirty schemes, although knowing what methods supermarkets use is only half the battle. Being able to beat them is key to winning the war on our wages.
What next?
We’ll tell you about some of the meanest supermarket tricks. We’ll also give you direct advice about how to fight them and how to save money when doing your groceries.
Supermarket Tricks #1: Taking it Slow
We all love music, right? Well, grocery stores love it too.
Ever wondered why many supermarkets play easy listening or classical music? That’s because they want to:
- Slow your pulse down
- Relax you
- Make your shop slower
Why? Because shopping slower makes you spend more.
Don’t believe us?
Professor Ronald E. Milliman’s study “Using Background Music to Affect the Behavior of Supermarket Shoppers” found grocery stores that played slow music increased their sales by nearly 40%!
How does that work?
Slowing us down means we more of the products and offers to make it more likely for us to buy them. but a study by Bangor University found some shocking results about what happens to our brains when we spend too much time in supermarkets. They found that:
- At around 23 minutes shoppers make choices with the emotional part of their brain instead of the logical
- After 40 minutes (the average time of a weekly shop) the brain stops making rational thoughts altogether
This proves that the longer you stay in a grocery store the more impulse buys and unnecessary purchases you make.
But music isn’t the only trick! Ever wondered why there are rarely any windows in grocery stores? When was the last time you saw a clock in one? All of these supermarket tricks are deliberately designed to make you lose track of time, take longer to do your shopping, and spend more of your money.
Solution: Get Your Grocery Groove On
The quicker you are at shopping, the cheaper it will be for you. So, why not put on some headphones and listen to your favorite upbeat playlist? This will help you keep your heart rate up, meaning you’ll focus more and move quicker around the store.
Supermarket Tricks #2: Not So Special Offers
You spot a large colorful sign or sticker with lots of big letters and even bigger numbers on it. It’s unmistakably an offer: buy, buy, buy!
WAIT!
Sometimes these offers aren’t always the best deals. Similar products at full price are still cheaper than what’s on offer. Those tantalizing signs and stickers are there to dupe us into thinking that this particular offer is the best. Even those nice big displays at the end of aisles aren’t always items on offer. They’re made to look like they’re on offer but are actually at full price!
Shockingly, research done by Which?, a UK consumer association, found that most offers made little to no savings whatsoever. 10% of multibuy offers in British supermarkets were actually more expensive than if bought singularly or when not on offer.
How do grocery stores get away with this? Well, it’s easy when 37% of customers automatically assume that multibuys are cheaper and therefore don’t check the price per unit. When you remember that you stop making logical choices after 23 minutes, you can see how easy it is to be fooled by these offers.
Solution: Ask Yourself Do You Really Need That Many?
Multibuy offers make us think that it’s cheaper to buy them as a group rather than as individuals. But whilst you might save money per item, you’re still actually spending more, buying 3 when you’d otherwise just buy 1.
Sometimes these offers exist simply to make you buy more than you need or intend. The New York Times found that we are more likely to buy more of an item if there’s a higher quantity involved in the offer. Trials saw shoppers in different stores offered the same items at the same price, but under different “deals”:
- 10 for $10
- 5 for $5
- 1 for $1
They’re all the same cost per item, so there should be no clear winner, right?
Astonishingly, the offer of “10 for $10” was the most popular, whilst “1 for $1” was the least popular, showing people are prepared to buy 10x more than they need because of how the deal is presented!
We know what you’re thinking, though: “If I buy more today, I won’t have to buy as many next time.” Well, you’d be surprised. You’re more likely to use the items you bought rather than save them for later. This means you’ll probably have to buy them again when you next do your groceries.
Speaking in the Reader’s Digest, Jeff Weidauer, former supermarket executive and vice president of marketing at Vestcom, said:
“If you used to buy a 6-pack of soda and drink 6 cans a week but now buy a 12-pack…you’re probably going to start drinking 12 cans a week. Be mindful when buying larger sizes to make sure your habits don’t change as a result.”
So, if you really think that you will not use the extra items before your next shopping trip, then you can make the decision to get the offer. If not: put the offer down, back away. Only buy the amount you intended to.
Solution: Use A Calculator Instead of Your Brain
Your brain gets tired when shopping. Even if you’re pretty confident about your mental math, you’re probably not going to be out of your sum-processing best. Give your brain a rest and use a calculator to work out if those deals are really as cheap as they claim to be, especially compared to similar products at full price.
You don’t even have to bring a physical calculator. Almost all smartphones have a basic one inbuilt which is perfect for the simple sums and divisions that you’ll need to do around the grocery store. You can even download a calculator app. If you do download one, we recommend one with a widget so you can do the math directly on your home screen.
Solution: Use a Shopping List App With a Price Function
Some shopping list apps, like Listonic, have a function where you can add prices to items, and can even multiply the unit price by desired quantity so you can see a total for each set. This means that when you’re shopping, you can see the maximum or desired amount you want to spend on those items. One glance at your shopping list and you can see if the offer is saving you money or costing you more than your budget.
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