Ooh, those clever, clever grocery stores. They have all sorts of subliminal tricks up their proverbial sleeves to make you part with as much of your money as they can. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of the shopping you do is a direct result of marketing, rather than your own well-thought-out shopping decisions.
I have been sharing some of these little tricks that the stores pull on grocery shoppers. Now here is another one that I call hide and seek. The reasoning behind this one is simple. The longer you spend in the store and the more things you see, the more items there are that will find themselves in your cart to be paid for by you.
This is why essential grocery items are kept either far away from each other or hidden in tucked away areas. Think about it. In most stores, the milk is kept far away from either the bread, the fresh produce or both. The other day, I went crazy trying to find the cream cheese, which was kept not with the cheese, but with the milk, all the way on the opposite side of the store.
And the things that you are mostly likely to run in for because you are short in a recipe, such as spices, are hidden out of the way, not because they aren’t as popular, but because you’ll have to go on a hunt for them by way of many other aisles, scanning the shelves all along the way. Where did I eventually find the marjoram? Over in the baking aisle.
If you get to know your store well, or make out a map after your first visit of where things are located, it will save you time and money. But the stores know that eventually you can figure things out. So, another thing that stores do every so often is to shift things around. Our old store did this about every two or three years.
Click here for more articles by Mary Ann Romans.
Five Little Grocery Shopping Tricks: The Limit Sale
Five Little Grocery Shopping Tricks: Shelf Placement
Five Little Grocery Shopping Tricks: Size Matters
The Secret to Grocery Print-Out Coupons
Grocery Gift Cards Can Save You Money
A Guide to Salvage Grocery Shopping
How Much Did Groceries Cost in the 1980s?
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