Psychology of Supermarkets

Psychology and social psychology is used in our everyday lives all the time. In fact when you do your weekly shop at Tesco or Asda you are seeing the results of a great deal of consumer psychology research!

We all know about psychological pricing, whereby you are more prone to buy something if it is £9.99 rather than a tenner. But there are other tricks of the trade employed by the retailers.

It begins with the store layout.

At the entrance you may smell an aroma of food to entice you in. Either from the restaurant or the bakery. Regular, everyday foods are spaced out across the store so you have to cover the entire shop for just a few household items.

Most of the public are is right handed and the majority of people turn right when entering a store, so perishables are found on the right or near the back of the store.

Foods bought often are usually in the centre of an aisle to ensure shoppers have to go down that aisle. The theory is that the more you are faced with foods/products the more likely you will buy. Aisles may well be designed to be quite narrow also, so that you are slowed down and you will be in the store for longer… which may mean you will buy more!

Eye level is buy level. Shoppers are apparently more inclined to make a purchase if the product is at the same height as the consumer. Foods that deliver a high profit margin will be at eye level. The big firms pay for this shelving space.

Kids foods/toys are usually placed at the eye level of a child so that they will see it and want their parent to buy it!

Foods that make up meals and recipes are found together, in order that you are tempted to buy them all!

Own brands are placed near the premium brands, with very similar packaging and colours in the hope you will buy them because they are cheaper or even by mistake!

Even at the end, at the checkout there are chocolates and other items arranged so that you may buy them as an impulse purchase.

Here is a pretty interesting A-Z of Retail Psychology: http://www.spacehijackers.org/html/ideas/archipsy/tricks.html

Psychology of Business - The Spotlight Effect

A famous study into what people think of us and what we wear (which has a significant impact in the world of consumerism and fashion) was conducted in 1998. The researchers asked people to find out who which celebrity was considered seriously ‘uncool’. The unlucky entertainer was Barry Manilow.

The real experiment began with people coming in and being asked to change into a T-shirt which has Manilow on it. They then sat in with another group of students but after a few minutes were asked to leave with the researcher. They were then asked how many people in the room would remember what was on the T-Shirt. The T-shirt wearers said around 48%. In reality the result was only 21%.

Perhaps this proves how self-obsessed we are, when in fact the majority of people aren’t really too bothered or interested in what we wear. This egocentrism which seems quite common among us was dubbed “The Spotlight Effect”.

I am unsure whether the fashion industry would like to believe this study as it does perhaps have some implications for them!

For the original research please click below:

http://www.psych.cornell.edu/sec/pubPeople/tdg1/Gilo.Medvec.Sav.pdf