How the Layouts of Grocery Stores are Secretly Designed to Make You Spend More Money

 So this topic probably doesn’t sound very interesting, but I promise it’s at least somewhat interesting. Keep in mind that everything I’m saying here is about the most efficient and profitable design of a grocery store so don’t go complaining if your neighborhood Tesco or Safeway isn’t exactly the same, but chances are next time you go to the grocery store you’ll notice at least some of these principles at work. Let’s start with the entrance of the grocery store. Americans in particular love shopping in a counter-clockwise path. For this reason, the door to grocery stores will typically be on the right hand side in the United States and the checkout counters will be on the left. In the UK, it’s often the opposite. For this reason, researchers speculate that this tendency to move in one direction is linked to the side of the road that the two demographics drive on. In one research study, Americans’ desire to move in a counter-clockwise path in a grocery store was so great that they actually went around physical barriers that researchers put up in the store in order to move in a counterclockwise direction. This tendency actually works in stores’ favor as well. Research shows that profits are higher in US grocery stores with an entrance to the right. It allows individuals to be move in the path that they like and also exposes shoppers to the most amount of merchandise possible. In fact, Americans spend on average $2 more per trip when they move through a grocery store in a counter-clockwise pattern. This may not seem like much, but when considering that every American goes to the grocery store an average of 1.5 times per week, or 78 times a year, this amounts to enormous differences in profits. The periphery of grocery store is also very calculated. Items that are almost always purchased in a trip to the grocery store—milk, meat, eggs—are spread out around the perimeter to force the shopper to be exposed to the most merchandise possible. Shoppers will almost always need to go to these sections, so the position of the milk, meat, and eggs dictates the way a shopper can move through the store. Within the center isles, some retailers will put the most sold items in the center of the isles to force the shopper to walk by even more merchandise. Looking at the cereal section, we can see the principle of “eye level is buy level”. In the ideal circumstance, the most profitable cereals are put at eye level. This often means that large brand name cereals are put in these middle shelves. At a kid’s eye level, retailers will often put the sugary kind of cereal that kids will pester their parents for. Often on the bottom levels are the bulk price or generic brand cereals. Those who are being frivolous are usually willing to look around for the best deals and often have clear intent to buy the product ahead of time. It’s much more likely that individuals will impulsively buy brand name cereal than bulk size generic cereal. On the top level is usually the healthy or small-brand cereal. Usually those who are buying healthy cereal have clear intent to buy that cereal, and profits are often lower on these cereals. Also a prime location for items that retailers want to push is the endcaps—the ends of isles. Almost all shoppers will pass these endcaps because of the perimeter pattern we discussed earlier. Interestingly, the liquor store monopoly in Sweden uses this principle in reverse. The monopoly was created by the government to promote moderation in alcohol consumption so one of the things they do to prevent impulse purchases is not have any endcap displays. So thats all the ways the layout of grocery stores is designed to manipulate you. Next time you go to the grocery store look out for some of these retail principles and I’m sure you’ll be able to spot at least some of them.