The way the brain buys

Supermarkets take great care of the way the goods they sell are arranged. This is
because they know a lot about how to persuade people to buy things.
When you enter a supermarket, it takes some time for the mind to get into shopping
mode. This is why the area immediately inside the entrance of a supermarket is known
as the ‘decompression zone’. People need to slow down and take stock of the
surroundings, even if they are regulars. Supermarkets do not expect to sell much here,
so it tends to be used more for promotion. So the large items piled up here are
designed to suggest that there are bargains further inside the store, and shoppers are
not necessarily expected to buy them. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, famously
employs ‘greeters’ at the entrance to its stores. A friendly welcome is said to cut
shoplifting. It is harder to steal from nice people.
Immediately to the left in many supermarkets is a ‘chill zone’, where customers can
enjoy browsing magazines, books and DVDs. This is intended to tempt unplanned
purchases and slow customers down. But people who just want to do their shopping
quickly will keep walking ahead, and the first thing they come to is the fresh fruit and
vegetables section. However, for shoppers, this makes no sense. Fruit and vegetables
can be easily damaged, so they should be bought at the end, not the beginning, of a
shopping trip. But psychology is at work here: selecting these items makes people feel
good and less guilty about reaching for less healthy food later on.
Shoppers already know that everyday items, like milk, arc invariably placed towards
the back of a store to provide more opportunities to tempt customers to buy things
which are not on their shopping list. This is why pharmacies are also generally at the
back. But supermarkets know shoppers know this, so they use other tricks, like
placing popular items halfway along a section so that people have to walk all along
the aisle looking for them. The idea is to boost ‘dwell time’: the length of time people
spend in a store.
Having walked to the end of the fruit-and-vegetable aisle, shoppers arrive at counters
of prepared food, the fishmonger, the butcher and the deli. Then there is the in-store
bakery, which can be smelt before it is seen. Even small supermarkets now use in-
store bakeries. Mostly these baked pre-prepared items and frozen ingredients have
been delivered to the supermarket previously, and their numbers have increased, even
though central bakeries that deliver to a number of stores are much more efficient.
They do it for the smell of freshly baked bread, which arouses people’s appetites and
thus encourages them to purchase bread and other food, including ready meals.
Retailers and producers talk a lot about the ‘moment of truth’. This is not a
philosophical idea, but the point when people standing in the aisle decide to buy
something and reach to get it. In the instant coffee section, for example, branded
products from the big producers are arranged at eye level while cheaper ones are
lower down, along with the supermarket’s own label products.
But shelf positioning is fiercely fought over, not just by those trying to sell goods, but
also by those arguing over how best to manipulate shoppers. While many stores
reckon eye level is the top spot, some think a little higher is better. Others think goods
displayed at the end of aisles sell the most because they have the greatest visibility. To
be on the right-hand side of an eye-level selection is often considered the very best
place because most people are right-handed and most people’s eyes drift rightwards.
Some supermarkets reserve that for their most expensive own-label goods.
Scott Bearse, a retail expert with Deloitte Consulting in Boston, Massachusetts, has
led projects observing and questioning tens of thousands of customers about how they
feel about shopping. People say they leave shops empty-handed more often because
they are ‘unable to decide’ than because prices are too high, says Mr Bearse. Getting
customers to try something is one of the best ways of getting them to buy, adds Mr
Bearse. Deloitte found that customers who use fitting rooms to try on clothes buy the
product they are considering at a rate of 8j% compared with 58% for those that do not.
Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying
either. In order to avoid a situation where a customer decides not to buy either
product, a third ‘decoy’ item, which is not quite as good as the other two, is placed
beside them to make the choice easier and more pleasurable. Happier customers are
more likely to buy.
Questions 5-10
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the reading passage?
Write
TRUE             if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE           if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN  if there is no information on this

5    The ‘greeters’ at Walmart increase sales.

6    People feel better about their shopping if they buy fruit and
vegetables before they buy other food.

7    In-store bakeries produce a wider range of products than central

8    Supermarkets find right-handed people easier to persuade than left-

9    The most frequent reason for leaving shops without buying