Supermarkets

‘Why are the fresh fruit and vegetables usually at the entrance to the store? It's always crowded, and they get squashed if I have to load heavy cans and packets on top.’ It's simply because supermarkets make a high profit on fresh fruit and vegetables, and they have discovered they sell more of them if they’re near the entrance. According to research carried out by supermarkets, customers prefer fresh goods to come first. Maybe it's because many of us arrive at the store concentrating on the kinds of fruit and vegetable we need. Once we've got that out of the way, we can relax and do the rest of the shopping at leisure. Another reason is that if we see fresh goods first, the sight and smell of all those rosy apples and glossy aubergines give a ‘feel good’ impression of freshness and quality which we carry around the store. Nowadays, trolleys should have a separate compartment where you can place fruit and vegetables so they don't get squashed.

‘Do they have to pipe smells of freshly baked bread around stores? I always end up buying an extra loaf or cake because the smell is just so tempting.’ That’s what the store is counting on! It’s well-known in the retail food industry that smell is the most powerful of human senses when it comes to influencing our choice of where we shop and what we buy. For years, some stores have been piping smells of freshly baked bread and real coffee through the air-conditioning to get appetites going. But this may be counterproductive, the retail consultants Retail Dynamics point out: ‘If you are doing your shopping at lunch or dinner-time when you are already hungry, the smell of baking may send you straight to the bread counter and then out of the store so you can eat quickly.’

‘Why is it that supermarkets change their layout so often? Just when I have speeded up my shopping by knowing where everything is, they move the section!’ This is another way of trying to make you buy things you thought you didn’t need. Supermarkets make most of their money out of fresh foods and ‘luxury’ snacks and far less on essentials like milk, sugar and bread. So everyday items are scattered around the store because in order to get them, you have to pass the ‘high earners’ and, hopefully, suddenly decide to buy some. The eye-catching display on the unit at the end of a row does not necessarily mean that the goods are the bargain of the week, as you may think. Manufacturers sometimes pay the supermarket to put their brands in the best positions. Among the best are the places across the ends of units where customer traffic is very high.

‘Why does my supermarket have to play music all the time? It drives me mad and I can't avoid it since it’s the only store I can reach conveniently.’ This may be an attempt to please customers — so they will enjoy shopping more — or a way of projecting an image. One supermarket plays 1960s music to go with its decor. Another sets out simply to please — playing 1950s and 1960s music in the morning when older customers do most of their shopping, pop music in the evenings and on Saturdays for a younger audience, and music that appeals to the whole family on a Sunday. Some stores use music to increase their profits by playing slow waltzes or light classics on quiet days, like Mondays, to keep customers browsing and buying. At busier times, like Saturdays, they'll increase the tempo to encourage customers to move quickly through the store. A recent supermarket study reported a 38% increase in sales when the store played slow music compared to fast. However, you can shop in silence at some supermarkets, which never play music — their customers say it puts them off.