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5 Ways Supermarkets Trick You into Shopping Their Way

thatsfit.com — #3 - "Shelf shuffles" - Supermarkets often rearrange the order and location of basic items in a blatant effort to keep customers looking longer and spending more time in the store shopping....

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JesterFPS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+17It's a conspiracy!
DukeMojo, on 10/10/2007, -19/+11Working for Wal-Mart for a year, I can say most of this is Bull.
- TheReport, on 10/10/2007, -4/+16oh yeah what did you do at wal-mart? a cashier? a stocker?, even a manager? or say...the 'Head of Marketing'? if you were any of the first three than i seriously doubt you had any strategic say on how to use manipulative tactics to push item out the door.
  - phil.busch, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Having spent four years in high school working in a grocery store, I can say most of this is true.
    
    Seriously, visit a Roundy's (Pick n' Save) store next time you're in Wisconsin. You will see what I mean.
    - capiCrimm, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Bah, Woodmans is so much better.
      - aywwts4, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Woodmans is the best grocery store in the world.
        
        It is larger than a walmart super center (But all food) Nothing is ever on sale, but everything is always reliably a .25-2.00 cheaper, the savings are so severe that some people can easily justify driving 30 minutes just to go shopping at one. It looks like the 1970s inside, but they stock simply everything, there is a lane of just goods written in Chinese and Japanese. There are four 30 foot long banks of just cheese. Best grocery store ever.
    - d03boy, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Aldys!
      - diggdallas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Even better than that...Aldi's!
    - hcjake, on 10/10/2007, -2/+1Visit a Copps store in WI also or Rainbow Foods in MN (both Roundy's also). I've been working in grocery stores for almost 4 years now and I agree most of those are true, atleast the store I'm at.
    - potterboy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Go to Wegman's in Pennsylvania, the grocery store from heaven.
- turnlikeawheel, on 10/10/2007, -5/+2Having heard about you working at Wal-Mart for a year, I can say that you're an unaspiring moron.
- bitweever, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3From working at a grocery chain's home office and my training as a dietitian, I can say that it's not Bull.
  
  For more insight, see Marion Nestle's book "What to Eat".
- Volatile36, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Some is crap, some isn't. Just depends where you work.
- YumYumKittyLoaf, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1These two are *****
  "# End-caps People often assume (I'm guilty of this one) that because something is featured and stacked up at the end of the aisle that it must be on sale or new or on some other kind of special. Rarely the case, but then you've already got it in your head that you want one.
  # Shelf shuffles Supermarkets often rearrange the order and location of basic items in a blatant effort to keep customers looking longer and spending more time in the store shopping."
  
  I work as a sign-coordinator at a small krogers and End-caps are used either for getting rid of product that we have a lot of, there IS a special in the ad for them, or as a share-builder. Secondly, we don't move things around for no reason. Milk, luncheon meat, eggs, bread, fruit, etc. are all located in the same place all the time. The only time they'd be moved is if they need more room for something else.
- kronix2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I live in the UK where Wal-Mart's chain of Asda stores is based. I've never come across any of the things listed in the article, in any store.
  
  The bakery is usually near the back, sweets/candy are far away from cereals, nobody assumes stuff on end caps are on sale, products stay in the same location for months at a time, and I haven't yet been to a store where they have resting areas.
  
  I guess our stores are missing a trick, but it's partially because there'd be thousands of complains if stores tried to do things like constantly shuffling product placements.
AriaStar, on 10/10/2007, -5/+28The item people are most likely to go to the store to get, with no other purchase planned, is milk. So milk is at the very back to force you to walk down other aisles, increasing the chance you will impulse-buy something else.

Also, regarding those end caps, they're more likely to put an item up that is NOT on sale to prevent you from going and looking at what IS on sale.

And if an item says "2 for $5," and the regular price is $4 each, many people think you have two buy two to get the deal, even if you only wanted one of that item. Basically the sale price is $2.50 each, but they're planting it in your head that you need two of them. However, if something is "buy one, get one free," then the deal is different.
- FLaw, on 10/10/2007, -2/+9Although im not doubting that it might be true. i figure they put the milk in the back because of the coolers... easier to fill from the truck as you don't have to lug all the dairy through the store.
  
  (from a guy that use to stock that damn dairy...***** eggs)
  - mousky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Then explain why many grocery stores have freezers and fridges that are NOT at the back of the store? They have to "lug" all that product through the store.
    
    The location of milk has nothing to do with coolers and everything to do with is popularity as a grocery item (ever notice how OJ - not a true dairy product is located right beside the milk?) and forcing customers to walk by as many end caps and aisles as possible.
- byrdgang, on 10/10/2007, -4/+5Maybe the milk is in the back because the fridge is in the back? Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, because you have place a fridge right at the front of the store just because the entrance is there. Hooking the fridge to all sorts of chords and stuff requires it to be in the back. Also, at many supermarkets, the milk is stocked from INSIDE (while the customer is outside) the fridge without ever having to go where the customers are.
  - diggdallas, on 10/10/2007, -4/+3No, that makes to much sense. Its easier to get pissed off and rant about how evil grocery stores are.
  - mousky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That's a weak argument. Plenty of grocery stores have freezers and fridges along their regular aisles - the cords are plugged into outlets in the floor. Stocking is not an issue. Aisle based freezers and fridges have to be stocked out in the open, where the customers are - stocking milk would be no different - that's why carts exist.
    
    Milk (and OJ) is located where it is because that point represents the farthest distance from the entrance, thereby forcing customers to walk by as many end caps as possible and at least one or two aisles. It's not a conspiracy. It's good business sense.
- igeoffi, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3In order to get to the back of the store from the front of the store, you only have to walk through one aisle. Most of the aisles you'll probably walk through don't even have sale/discounted items on them. Milk is also at the back because it's easier to stock from the truck and you can stock it from the milk box (large refrigerator room) that way.
  
  End caps are almost always sale items. Supermarkets use end caps so they can have more of the sale item out on the floor and not have customers constantly asking for restocks of sale items.
  
  "2 for $5" could mean you have to buy 2. It depends on the fine print. Most of the time you can get 1 and still get the deal but there are ocassions where you do need to buy two.
  
  Shelf shuffles happen when a store gets a new product and doesn't have room for it. When they do shuffle things around, they leave a sign posted to where the relocated item is located. Stores don't do it frequently because it makes things much harder for the employees than for the customer.
  
  Stores position the deli in the front because a lot of people come in after work just to buy food from the deli.
  - dearsweetbriar, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yes, but listen to the larger point of your post:
    
    There IS strategy involved!
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -3/+1Leave it to Aria to post a COMPLETELY asinine and inaccurate comment.
  
  As the others have alreayd humilaited you, I won't repeat it. But again, there are only 4 exterior walls to a store. One is going to be registers. That leaves three for the refrigerated section. One will have the milk. I can honestly say that it is along one of hte other sides more at least as often as it is in the back. Because you whole concept of it being in the back forces you to go through the whole store is comepltely laughable. Are your stores set up like one long aisle? Nope. You walk right past all the aisles to get to the back.
  
  And as the comment above points out, sometimes you DO have to buy 2 to get the sale price. In most, if not all states, it must specifically spell that out in the sale sticker. Price Chopper in the Northeast does that on occasion, as do a lot of convenient stores. And when the do, it MUST give the single item price if the sale applies to only multiples. And the end caps ARE usually sale items. Not always, but usually they are. Which again, makes your comment silly.
  
  I haven't quite figured out what good you are, Aria. You are completely ignorant on everything. Yet you think you know everything. Useless.
  - mousky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No, only part of that back wall will have milk. The rest will probably be a bakery, fresh meats and/or some frozen goods. When you walk into your typical grocery store, look straight back at the rear wall. I doubt you will see the dairy section there. Yes, it's located along the back wall but at the corner diagonally opposite of the main entrance. Milk and OJ are popular products. If I owned a store, I would want people to see as many other products and aisles before they were able to put the milk and/or OJ in their cart.
    
    And most end caps do NOT have sale items. Why would you put sale items in places with high traffic and/or places where people are forced to slow down? No, you put your sale items in the aisles - you want people to walk by as many regular priced items as possible. End caps are for impulse buys.
- kronix2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1In every store I've been to, the milk has been in the middle of the store.
- aster2, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I agree. All the essential and healthy food needed is around the perimeter of the store.
nubious, on 10/10/2007, -16/+11Yeah this article is way off.. This person's never worked in a supermarket, or if they did, it was as the janitor....

Go read a book .. Edumacate yerselve!
(Burried for propaganda)
- Memnochxx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I used to deliver to supermarkets, you're right. It doesn't work like this.
Neuticals, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2Buried for being extremely old news. This was on 20/20 about 10 years ago...

And having worked in retail for many more years than you DukeMojo, I can say that this is not bull, but common practice.
bromanct, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11I didn't know marketing and product placement was blatant trickery. Welcome to the real world.
- turnlikeawheel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Where are they tricking you? You smell bread, you buy bread, they're mind controlling assholes? You're an idiot who buys everything that easiest to find, they're evil geniuses?
Bahimiron, on 10/10/2007, -2/+20I can honestly say that in my years of being a grown up living on his own, I've never gone to a grocery store that regularly moved basic items around in an attempt to confuse people into staying longer. In fact, I imagine that a grocery store that routinely changed its layout would confuse customers into shopping elsewhere. People like knowing what they can expect down each aisle. Especially people who have a regular schedule for going to the grocery store and take with them a shopping list. Y'know, the sorts of people who shop for a family and are the bread and butter of a supermarket.
- rarson, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Yeah, I like going into a store where I know exactly where everything is, because it saves me time and shopping is a pain in the ass in the first place. Most of the stores I go to, they rarely, if ever, move the food around.
  
  I also worked at a grocery store for a while. Did quite a bit of shelf stacking, never did we change the arrangement of the items. All they would ever change were the end shelves.
- castleking, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Working for a SuperTarget currently, I can say we DO move item locations around either annually or semiannually. Its not a major change, its mostly changing around the aisles' layout, not content. It probably messes with the people who work there more than the customer.
- Volatile36, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Usually when things are moved, it's because the companies have paid for different shelf space at eye-level, for example. Only once have I seen a store move entire sections around.
- kwazyJAS, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1At my store they used to have the bags of ice towards the front of the store. Then they moved it to the back of the store I guess so people would have to walk down the frozen food section past the delicious ice cream, frozen dinners, desserts, etc.
  
  Now we always get confused customers always asking where the ice is.
slyzxx, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11Ohh no its a conspiracy stupid bloggers and diggers
jay0312, on 10/10/2007, -7/+2They left out the part where they keep the milk all the way at the back.
pyrotoad, on 10/10/2007, -3/+5buried for gross add to content ratio.
- FLaw, on 10/10/2007, -3/+3Dugg for not knowing because of adblock plus..
EspressoNinja, on 10/10/2007, -2/+14The "shelf shuffle" thing is bull. When I used to work retail grocery, the management never just said "hey let's move the the entire store around just to keep people here longer". I always guessed that milk is in the back because that's where the dairy coolers and stockroom are typically located. Trust me folks, there's no conspiracy or "tricks". The most sinister thing you'll find at a grocery store are the discount cards that send you junk mail. Even those are pre-activated so you can usually get away with filling out false information.
- Pleased2CU, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0My Super Wal-Mart does the "shelf shuffle" in the grocery section every six months. They will flip items from one side of the aisle to another side and then the next time, they will mirror the items to the other side of the aisle. Not only is it an inconvenience to learn the new location of all the items, but often during the flipping process, the items you want to buy are not available because they are off the shelves, being moved. I will say that I have never seen my Kroger or Schucks blatantly do this kind of shenanigans.
BassMastr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Sounds like smart business to me.
Hoxie, on 10/10/2007, -3/+7Wow. Maybe I'm just too smart to be lured into such things, but I don't recognize any of this at my supermarket(publix).

1. Candy and sweets are located, conveniently, on the candy and sweets isle, located in the back left of the store.

2. They put odd stuff at the end caps, like sour cream and onion cheezits and cherry whipped cream on the end caps around here.

3. No, I'm pretty sure Isle 1 is dairy, isle 2 is organic foods, chips are always on the top right at the back on isle 8.

4. Ours has a bank. Not particularly cozy.

5. The bakery is near the exit, actually, so they may be trying to lure you into buying something when you leave, but the deli and chik-in-mart are in the back of the store behind the freezer maze.
- d03boy, on 10/10/2007, -4/+4aisle
  - BassMastr, on 10/19/2007, -1/+1Way to dude! You found a misspelling on the Internet and corrected it!!
compgeek, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4like this is new news. buried as old old old and hey it's called marketing people
Slacker1031, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9we have bagels and muffins to sell. they go with milk pretty well, we'll put them next to the milk to help move them faster so they don't go bad. mmm, Filthy marketing ploy? or common ***** sense.
- turnlikeawheel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1***** amen.
FLaw, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I worked at then local shopright for a while.

The candy was located in the cereal isle. The end cap and shelf shuffle is bs (we are WAAAYYY to lazy to do the "shelf shuffle" crap).
The "spot to relax" is located right next to the bakery which is located next to the entrance. But that doesn't mean they planed it out in that manner...
slipkn0tz23, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0I stock shelves at a supermarket.

"Many stores put the candy/sweets aisle directly opposite the cereal aisle so a must-have (cereal) easily leads to a must-avoid (candy), especially if your kids are along."
Completely true. Our candy and Cereal aisle are combined.

"Tantalizing smells Stores often position the bakery or deli near the entrance so the first thing you smell and think of when you walk in is freshly baked sweets and rotisserie chicken."
We actually have the bottle-return machines by the door... Tops could learn a thing or 2 from this article.
- Punisher2K, on 10/10/2007, -0/+190% of cereal is candy anyway so it makes sense to put them together. Notice how cereal is "part of a nutritious breakfast". So is dog ***** if everything else is good for you.
gcauthon, on 10/10/2007, -2/+5Where does this person shop? I've shopped at a lot of stores and even worked stocking a couple. 1 - I've never seen the candy aisle across from the cereal. 2 - End caps are for specials where they don't have enough room on the shelf for the extra stock... duh! 3 - I've never seen basic items shuffled around. 4 - Cozy spots to relax? I've never seen or heard of this. I've never spent all afternoon at the grocery store either. Is this a store for chronic over-eaters? 5 - Tantalizing smells? I guess if you're a complete pig, you can smell wrapped twinkies from across the store.
- aywwts4, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1oddly enough just today I went looking for cake mix, and after looking for it for a few minutes I found a pile of the same old, same price cake mix on the endcap, the endcap on either end of it was Ketchup and Olive Oil... I didnt think much of it, but I guess they do shuffle the basic goods.
jbob2000, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Another common practice is to move all the older products to the front of the shelf, so if you want a product with a later expiry date, look at the very back of the shelf
- jayyoung, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Thats called rotating. Its not some kind of tomfoolery.
  - jbob2000, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1We called it facing where i worked, but it means the same thing as rotating i guess.
- danomagnum, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Plus you have to depend on the employees not being too lazy to make the swap.
- hoowahman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2um yeah..thats how you do it with milk
- turnlikeawheel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3Doyyyeeeee! Gad-dangit, I was buying expired milk all this time! Thank you, sir!
- morpheus69, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Dumbass...milk is stocked from BEHIND the shelves, so of course the newer ones will be in the back. Also, do you expect the supermarket to throw away tons of milk because you want one that expires 14 days from now instead of 12 days from now?
  - bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah...because ALL supermarkets are like yours. ALL have shelves that are open in the back and stocked from the back. NONE are different.
    
    Moron.
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Not only is that not a scheme, it is the LAW in most states. Possibly all. Stores MUST rotate their stock.
  A few months ago a local chain kept selling yogurt well past the expiration date. But only at one store. It turns out the chain was taking all items that were nearing the expiration date, and shipping them off to this one store, which is in one of the porrer sections of the city. I would see things like mayonnaise that had expiration dates no later than 3 weeks beyond when I saw it, while at every other location the EARLIEST date was 2 months later. Yogurts were usually 3-4 weeks at the "better" locations and never more than 5 days at the crappy location. I complained several times about the yogurt and got snotty replies from the manager. So I contacted the department of markets and agriculture or whatever it is. When that department called me, they explained that selling expired food is not illegal, except for baby formula, so they could do nthing about it. However, the guy then said "Are they putting the new stock up front and not rotating it? Because if they are doing that, we CAN go after them for that."
  So, you are complaining about a store following the law.
rnelsonee, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Supermarkets are also usually designed to make you walk counter-clockwise, which apparently slows people down. They'll usually have two entrances of course, so you're not forced in any way, but the fruits + veggies, plus any Starbucks or bank kiosks are on the right, so most people walk in that direction. Then milk is in the back-left, making you walk through the whole store.
- rdoger6424, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3I didn't realize that until now, but it's so true!
  - diggdallas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Wow, its so true that stores are uniform in their layout...what a scam!
- Memnochxx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I go clockwise.
joshuaer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Tantalizing smells Stores often position the bakery or deli near the entrance so the first thing you smell and think of when you walk in is freshly baked sweets and rotisserie chicken.

Most stores in Minnesota put the deli in back!
- diggdallas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Heaven forbid people should be greeted with the aroma of food when they're in the store to purchase....food! Would it make you less paranoid if they piped sewage smell through the air vents?
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0That one was one of the dumbest ones in the article anyway. It has to be along one of the four walls of the store. The back is usually the stockroom. The front is the registers. That leaves just two places for them to put deli, bakery, and all things that will give you those smells. So obviously at least one of those will have to be close to the entrance, which is usually in the front, but toward the side.
elliam, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Buried for being blog spam.. inaccurate blog spam. I hope the jerk who posted it can actually relate to the endlessly shifting market shelves.
ThraxyWaxy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I work at a grocery store and I can proudly say we're only guilty of having the deli smell when you walk in, and putting stuff up on the ends of the aisles. The candy and cereal are separate for sure, there's no cozy places to sit down, and stuff doesn't' get shuffled around on the shelves, that just makes our job a whole lot harder.
aywwts4, on 10/10/2007, -3/+4One trick they don't mention, and I'm sure many of you have fallen for it.

If you stick enough random crap in a bin it must be on sale.

Throw it off the shelves, mess it up, don't even change the price, now that it is in a bin this must be a great deal, and then we proceed to digg through it for 10 minutes after extracting our haul of gamecube games, some unlabeled cans of... Soup?, a bottle of off brand shampoo, and a super soaker 5000.
weebit, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Take a list of items you need at the store, and leave the kids at home, unless they are well trained not to beg, and throw temper tantrums. Mine know that begging, temper tantrums, and fighting gets them nothing but them in time out, and no trip to the store for a while. training them early really helps out the best.

Yes I get them one sugar cereal, but the others are not loaded with sugar, and I do the same for snacks. So the store can place the crap products where ever they want too, my children know that their is no nutrition value in it, and it is not a staple of our diet.

It's a shame going to the store though, I see people ahead of me in line with their baskets full of crap. They can pay out over a hundred dollars or more, and not have one decent meal in their buggy's. Everyone goes for processed food, and spends a fortune, and can't understand why groceries are so high.
SaintStryfe, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Damn them for trying to make a profit, and for providing convience and market-tested layouts! Damn them to hell!
diggdallas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Grocery stores are in business to sell products. I wouldn't call any of these practices a "scheme"...implying they're trying to rip people off. I go to the store knowing exactly what I need and that's what I buy. If people are "coerced" into buying impulse items, let them pay their stupid tax.
Reedan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4What you say?! Businesses actually try to set their stores up to sell MORE?! OH SHI~~
byrdgang, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2Having worked at CVS/pharmacy for several years, I can testify to the shuffling being true. I'd repeatedly complain to the manager about the shuffling, but he would never do anything about it. One of my coworkers once told me they do it so that the customer spends more time looking for stuff, but this would piss me off because I'd have to spend more time looking for an item in order to give it to a customer who doesn't want to look for it. Every single week, the manager would be rearranging stuff.

I am glad I left the retail scene. Lots of BS.
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0I have been in at least 40 different CVS stores and have NEVER experienced shuffling. Because it is not done.
  - byrdgang, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1So I am making up everything to add fantastic accounts of my life at CVS? I am sure that is what I did. I am now widely admired all over the Internet, and I am hailed as a freedom fighter against the war on CVS.
    
    Come on...if you've worked at CVS, you know this is true. Unless you're an employee, I don't know how you're going to argue with a former employee. Besides, I didn't say every single item is moved on a regular basis. They move certain things, even slightly at times.
CyberBlade, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3he forgot a major one.

"Blanket marketing" - where the likes of coles or safeway/woolworths start selling their own home brand ***** and forcing all the named brands to have very few or none in stock.

people are dumb enough to buy it instead of voting with their wallets. :P
- joshdare, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Yeah, "You'll love Coles" my ass! I got their peanut butter yesterday - tastes like ***** :(
- turnlikeawheel, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The store brand stuff is often better, actually. Maybe your shiny label to taste bud connection is out of wack.
adacas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0the shuffling part has some merit in retail cause at Target we are constantly moving stuff around. Just when I have the locations of the most wanted items in the store memorized they go ahead and shuffle it around. Sometimes we put items in odd places where they don't belong like garden tools in automotive. I never figured that out
- VFreitas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0Random things are moved into certain places for impulse buys. Batteries near toys, toothpicks near snacks, even condoms in razor sections. Obviously those garden tools must tie into something in that aisle.
weebit, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Forgot to mention another practice too. Not so much the super markets doing this, it is the ones making the items for the store shelves. ...

You find a item cheap then look at the item to find out it is cheap because their is less in the box, can, or bottle.
drewlynde, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1These are all great sale tactics, but I think it is quite rare for supermarkets to intentionally shuffle the shelves in illogical orders and such...It seems like too much psycho-analyzing and time for one to endeavor that. I know supertargets have the starbucks and endcaps and such, but the shelves one I really can't agree with.
VFreitas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1The whole shelf shuffling thing is bull. In most stores there are specific aisles and sections of those aisle for specific items. The only time those sections are "shuffled" are when new products are introduced and old products are taken out. And for everyone who thinks the companies don't want you to buy their sales product, you're obviously mistaken. About 90% of those products that are on sale GO on sale because they were sold to the company for a lesser price from the manufacturer. ALSO, most stores have special codes on their shelf tags that can tell anyone who can decipher them a lot about the product. They can tell it's tagged with an EAS sticker, hell, even the cost (not retail) of the item. Also, be sure to look down when you walk around certain stores. Many non-expensive children products are kept on lower shelves for a reason. They grab that damn bouncy ball and chocolate bar from a couple different aisles and it's game over for the parents.
morpheus69, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Most end caps are "rented" to the manufacturers in product placement deals. In fact, supermarkets in China make more from product placement fees from manufacturers than they do from selling products!
zerodaysoon, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2no wonder im fat!!
- skyfire1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Fatty fat fat.
BassMastr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+4Why am I not surprised there are so many diggers who work in supermarkets...
xquizit, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1discounts sure work for me
Aniphx, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You know, I have heard about some of these from my former manager at the store I used to work at. Pretty clever actually. I didn't even consider the rearranging concept beforehand.
QuickeningYak, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0That list is nothing. The following list of articles about the sort of sniveling crap that marketers and retailers are so religiously convinced is useful is much more informative.
http://sixwise.com/columnists.htm?lvl=2&clsid=7&cl ...
Personally, I believe people in general aren't nearly as retarded as marketers think they are, so their efforts, while irritating for some and at best charming for a few, are essentially wasted.
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Personally, what you FEEL without any market research is meaningless. You see, these people are FAR smarter than you are, especially at this thing. They also have FACTS to back up their decisions. You have none.
  - QuickeningYak, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Personally, what I FEEL is optimism that retail marketing and advertising are much closer to worthless than the people who do that for a living would like the world to believe they are, which is why I made a statement against the conceit of those people who feel there is no way of life other than whatever mindless, shallow, trendy-mouthed demogoguery they magically declare should come along next.
    
    More to the point than you expected, though, is the simple observation that I don't have to do AT ALL what they, that species of prehensile garbage sometimes called "advertisers" or "retail marketers", do for a living in order to defeat what they believe are their most profound efforts, and that's precisely why I'm optimistic about the lack of efficacy of ANY retail advertising or marketing.
    
    I mean, seriously, you tried to condescend to a perfect stranger that they admire the entire world for being the chattel they've assumed them to be; evidently, that's enough for you to believe they're right.
    
    Slightly more carefully, what I THINK is that defeating the marketers, advertisers, and other such human trash in the world is as simple as recognizing what they're trying to do and writing it off as the trite, impotent, trendy-mouthed demogoguery that it is. It is quite literally as simple as that: I don't need data to refute what is simply asserted.
    
    If you should have any other grand insights into how much smarter than a perfect stranger is some mystical otherwise-identified "they", I'm sure I'd be very stimulated not to hear about it. Alternatively, it's not so mystical, implying that you're one of the small legion of crap-slinging monkey-headed mouth-encrusted somnambulistic trendy filth that I'm talking about.
    
    In either case, though, I'm sure you'll continue to feel some ***** sense of superiority, and for only the most ideological of reasons.
    
    But hey, thanks for asking.
    
    *****.
skyfire1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Make. A. Shopping. List.
ukthom, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2You Americans need to experience Aldi and Lidl. Truly, a must-do whenever you come to Europe. You'll never look at Albertsons/Food Lion/Star Market/etc the same :)
- bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -1/+0We have Aldi in the US. It is crap. Unless you are on food stamps.
rmeddy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's a trap.
bingobongony, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0How many of these ***** articles about stores "tricking you" into buying stuff are going to make the front page? Most are *****. (I have NEVER seen candy in the same aisle is cereal, and I have been to literally hundreds of different supermarkets, spreaing over at least a dozen different chains.) Nor have I ever seen items moved to confuse us.
- mousky, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1It's not necessarily about tricking you. It's more about maximizing opportunities.
leftcoastfunk, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2since when was good business synonymous with trickery...oh wait...
JohnnyXmas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1How the ***** does this keep getting to the front page? it's not news. . .in fact, it's all stuff that our mothers all taught us about supermarkets by age 5.
rjp_wayne2018, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1the stores i go to have the baking goods in one aisle, the drinks in one aisle, the canned goods in one aisle and so on. this article sounds like paranoia to me
Dustin00, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I know what my brand of soymilk looks like, they can move it around all they like, I'm still not reading or registering the static around it.

Same for the bulk of everything else I buy.
nebloof, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0The only thing shelf shuffles do is piss me off. I got into a grocery store, with the things in mind I want to buy. I rarely go for impulse buy.
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5 Ways Supermarkets Trick You into Shopping Their Way

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