Ok, I am a marketer for a living, but I am an online marketer really more of a media analyst, so I don’t get into packaged cosumer goods or distribution processes. I am thinking though that I may have to go into a career change because these marketers have found a way to double their sales of items and it’s very coy. Most people don’t even realize it.
Most grocery stores in the 80′s were very organized, all the items that were made from that same food types or materials were categorized together. (paper products, dairy, meat etc…) and people knew where every thing was, and got in and out of the store quickly and efficiently.
Then in the 90′s it started getting hard to find things. I found myself looking for english muffins and not finding them where they used to be, in the bread isle, but in the refrigerated case next to the eggs. What the f are they doing there? I didn’t think too much about it, because there weren’t too many items that way and we all re-learned the layout of the Jewel and Dominicks and went about our way.
Since then they seem to rip appart the grocery stores about once a year just to re-organize them so that they are all confusing again. You find yourself taking an hour or more to do your grocery shopping, when it used to take maybe 30 minutes. About this time I began to suspect this disorganization was intentional and an article in TIME magazine about the monetization of space in retail stores confirmed it.
It pisses me off to be taken advantage of when I have to buy something other than what I need, because I can’t find what I want and the thing I do find that is similar, is priced twice as much. But hey, the marketer that thought of all this is probably promoted to VP by now, and sitting fat and happy, so what does he care? Anyway here are some of the things your grocery store does to cheat you out of more money than you want to spend.
1. They place basic necessities in the back of the store (milk, eggs, meat) so you have to walk by everything else to get to them. Marketers know that some of you will see the stuff you’re walking by and toss it into your shopping cart even if you had not intended on buying it until you saw it at that moment.
2. They group things together that often are used in making the same dish or meal to increase sales. The english muffins were not in the cooler with the eggs because they needed refrigeration. They were there because the marketers know that people make eggs and english muffins together a lot. And the ones in the cooler are the most expensive english muffins in the store. You see them, you think that would be good together, and in the cart it goes. You never hunt down the other brands that are a dollar or more less in the bread isle or wherever they are hiding them now. You just buy the expensive ones because of proximity.
3. The biproduct of this re-organizing is that people don’t know where the products are that they want and they spend double the time in the store wandering around looking for them. Marketers have also found that people see and buy a lot of extra stuff when they are wandering around the store looking for that thing on their shopping list that they can’t find. Its the see it, toss it in the cart method of raising the total average sale of the consumer. So they rip up and reorganize the store with even less efficiency each year. Just to get you to buy more stuff.
4. Placement on the shelf is usually decided by bids with manufaturers and distributors. The most profitable place on the shelves is the one at eye level. That costs the most to put your products there. The top and bottom are less expensive, but if you look there as a consumers you will find the better deals because the most expensive groceries are at eye level.
5. Latley they have also started adding flat screen TV’s to the checkout isle. This not only entertains people as they wait it is full of ads that get you to buy more. I think the other thing it does is it makes the consumer complacent about what they are ringing up. They don’t see that their kid just threw 2 handfulls of candy from the shelf by the checkout on the convayer belt and they get bought. They also don’t watch to see that the items they are buying get rung up properly and are priced what they were labeled as. So the stores get away with more and have less complaining customers when things go wrong.
Granted, the grocery business is a low margin business with maybe a 2% profit margin from what I have read, and any increase in sales helps them cover the damaged, rotted and spoiled food that happens in the store at a total loss when they have to throw it away. But something about this is just so decieving and I always resent someone who purposly builds a bad, inneficient and deceptive process to extract more time and money out of consumers. It’s just bad ethics, and at some point will backfire. Maybe when we all order our food over the internet.
Marshall Field’s Walnut Room has been a tradition for many families for years. Macy’s was nice and left it pretty much the same when they bought the store and you can still see the giant tree in the middle of the room. The Walnut Room is a nice restaurant (with wood paneled walls of course) in the middle of the department store. It is on the 7th floor, on the opposite side of the food court. There you can take a break from your shopping trip and have an elegant lunch or dinner in their dining room. They have a lot of favorites there that have been on the menu for years. For the Holidays and Christmas they take the tables out of the center under the 3 story cathedral celing and assemble a giant 3 story tree. Then a special designer like (Martha Stewart in 2007) is asked to decorate it with custom designed ornaments specially for Marshall Fields and now Macy’s. You can buy the special ornaments too to take home for your tree. The last ones done for Marshall Fields in 2005 were from Swarofski and I bought one because it was the last year we would see the tree as Marshall Fields. Last year was the first year the Walnut Room was open with Macy’s ownership and we went and it was nice. Wedgewood china was the designer of the tree last year in 2006. The entire tree sparkled with twinkling lights and had light baby blue and white ornaments on all the branches. The dining experience at the Walnut Room hasn’t changed much, it was still good. I recommend the pot pie and the Pointsettia drink. (champaigne and cranberry juice) The service is good and the prices are reasonable considering this is downtown Chicago on State Street.
