I thought I would start out the Trim Your Grocery Bill series by informing you of some of the tactics grocery stores use to entice you to spend more. Now, these tactics are great for their business and actually quite smart, but not so good for those of us who would like to decrease our grocery bill!
These store tactics work because so many of us are impulse spenders. How many things do you come home with every time you go grocery shopping that you didn’t intend on buying when you were still at home? I’m guilty and I’m sure almost all of you are!
Here are 5 sneaky ways grocery stores get you to spend more:
Buy 1 Get 1 Free – Everyone loves getting something for free! You may be wondering what’s so bad about this? To be honest, nothing…if you were intending on buying that product anyway. If you weren’t intending on buying the product, you do get a free item, but you’re still spending extra money that may not be in your budget, to get the initial item so you can get the deal.
Free Samples – One word…Costco. Free samples are down almost every aisle in Costco! Combining the smell and taste of these samples, they’ve pretty much got you. Those tasty treats will be haunting you even if you don’t purchase them at that moment. You might see them on sale somewhere and suddenly you’re off to the store. Costco isn’t the only grocery store I seen free samples at though, they just stand out in my mind. My advice? Don’t buy, just consider them a nice snack or perk for shopping. (unless of course, you had intended on buying that product anyways!)
Giant Shopping Carts – Most grocery stores provide shopping carts for your convenience. By providing shopping carts of the gigantic variety, they’re hoping you’ll fill your cart to the brim with stuff you “can’t live without”. Make sure you bring a shopping list to keep yourself on track. If you’re needing only a few items, leave the cart or shopping basket at the door.
Store Layout – All you need is some milk. But since the milk is all the way in the back of the store, you happen to stumble across some great deals and you remembered you could maybe use some bananas. While you were intending on spending only $4 or so for the milk, you ended up paying close to $20 with all your extras included. The grocery store didn’t place the milk at the back because they weren’t sure where else to put it…they want you to walk through as many aisles as possible so that you buy as much as possible. You’ll actually notice that all the daily necessities are placed in far, out of the way locations. Same idea here, they want your eyes to see all the great things they have to offer in hopes you’ll be enticed to spend above what you had intended in the first place.
End Caps, Clearance Bins and Checkout Stands – End caps are the shelves at the end of every aisle. You’ll find new items on “special” that the manager would like to bring your attention to on these shelves and are more often than not profit the store and not you, the consumer.
Clearance bins. Looking through the items, you’ll find something you never knew you needed since it’s now on sale! Score! When you bring the item home you may realize you really didn’t need it and spent money needlessly. One final thought on the clearance bins, the sale price might not actually be a steal. Double check the regular price to make sure you’re actually getting a significant discount.
Checkout stands have high-profit impulse items like chocolate bars, gum and magazines placed around and near them. While we wait our turn in the checkout line, the store has a captive audience and know if they place as many different products into this area as possible, they’ll earn a large amount on impulse sales.
I’m fairly certain that there isn’t one of us that hasn’t been tricked into spending more than we intended at the grocery store. I know for a fact that I’m guilty!
Have you been suckered by one of these tactics? Are there any other sneaky ways the grocery store will entice you to spend?
A big one for me is when a store advertises 2/$5 let’s take for example. Most stores will give you half the total price (in this example $2.50) if you buy 1 instead of 2 units. Most people don’t know this and actually buy 2, when really they could of done fine with 1.
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SavingMentor Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:01 am
Most stores will let you buy only 1, but Shoppers Drug Mart definitely doesn’t. Their systems are pretty smart.
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Simply Frugal Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:08 am
Oh and I hate that if you’re buying only 1 item some stores increase the price but have a better value if you buy 2 (or more)! For example, I only want 1 can of tomato sauce and it’s priced at $1.29 but if I buy 2 cans, I can get 2 for $2.00. sheesh
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I’m definitely guilty of spending more but I do so knowing exactly what is happening and as long as I can afford it, I’m ok with that.
One point I want to make is with the Buy 1 Get 1 Free sales. These are usually a good deal, but definitely not as good as most people think. If you look at the regular price of the item you are purchasing and then watch the flyers for the same item you may see that it regularly goes on sale for more than 50% off, which is better than a B1G1 deal.
One example that I know this often applies to is steak. Steak regularly goes on sale for 60%+ off, but you also see it advertised in B1G1 sales a lot. Waiting for a regular sale and stocking up will usually save you more money. I wrote an interesting article on the subject of sales:
Buying On Sale: Are You Really Saving Money?
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Simply Frugal Reply:
February 2nd, 2011 at 10:13 am
Great point on the B1G1! This is very true!
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I’m ex-retail and it’s not just the store layout you have to watch out for – it’s the shelf layout as well. It’s called planogramming. Items at eye level are always the premium brands that are usually more expensive and generate the highest profit dollars. The cheaper, lower profit items are on the bottom shelves. Store brands are usually merchandised to the right of their national brand equivalent (that’s where your eye/hand will intuitively go first). They’re usually the better value for the consumer but generate higher profit dollars for the store than the national brand. Just be aware that every item on that shelf is placed very strategically to generate the most profit dollars for the store based on mountains of purchase data.
Another tip: if the national brand goes on sale, the store will almost always drop their store label to match or beat the national brand price.
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Simply Frugal Reply:
February 3rd, 2011 at 11:20 am
Thanks so much for your input and expertise Melissa! Great information and something we should keep in mind!
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One thing I’ve noticed with the two competing grocery chains here is that when A is having a BOGO sale, B is usually selling the same items even cheaper. So buyers at A think they’re getting a deal, but they’re not. I can’t count the number of times I’ve compared the flyers and found that store B is still a better deal.
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Simply Frugal Reply:
March 11th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
Anita, I notice this with a particular store in our area as well! I know if Safeway or other big chain store has something on sale, this other store will sell it a bit cheaper.
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Store often change their layout. When they do this shoppers
1. Stay in the store longer because they don’t know where the item they are looking for is. The longer you spend in a store, the more likely you are to spend more money.
2. Because you are looking around on the shelves for your usual items, you may notice items you have never seen before and therefore, have a greater chance of purching an item you never intended.
These are two more reasons why shopping with a list is so important.
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Country Grocer is really guilty of putting up big signs on alot of food item’s.This is a real
rip off to the shopper.I’m guilty of it to,I thought that meant those item’s were on sale.
One day I just happened to look behind the sign and it was the same price.Only the signs with
blue are on sale.Course they are the one’s up high.
Like we all would know that one!!.Also check your recipts,you don’t get the sale price all the time
or the product date is running out soon.
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