Retailers cleverly design and arrange shops and stores to make shoppers spend as much as possible. They pay consultants mega-money for advice and studies into how people shop. Shops plan where they put stock so as to ensure that shoppers spend as much money as possible and they try to manipulate customers’ behaviour. When you are aware of the tactics, that stores used to part you from your money, you spend less money and get true bargains.
Whatever the store or shop whether it sells clothing, food or other items, they use marketing tricks. Shoppers who know about these retail tricks are better shoppers. Anything that the store wants to sell you is on the right as you enter the store, whereas the bargains or clearance rail will be at the back of the store. This is because most humans are right-handed and they automatically turn right on entering a shop.
Clothing stores have so many tricks but often they fool you into inferring something that is not so. One retailer admitted buying cheap shirts from Sri Lanka, sewing in washing instruction labels in French and English. Staff then folded the shirts, displaying on a table in front of a wall bearing a huge photograph showing a beautiful female model in an exotic place wearing the shirt. Nowhere did the company say the shirts were made in France, but the photograph and the method of display led customers to infer that they were. Clever display tactics manipulate customers into believing something that is not actually true and may cause you to make an impulse buy that you will regret later.
BOG OFFs, or Buy One Get One Free, and other offers are only bargains, if it is something that you usually use. Do be aware that such offers are not always what they seem, the regular price that the offer refers to may not actually be the true regular price used in that particular store but the manufacturer’s recommended retail price. They can fool you into buying something that you will not use or spending more than you wanted to. Do you really need two pairs of trousers the same?
The economy size is not always cheaper. One supermarket sells tea bags are sold in boxes containing 100 tea bags or 50 tea bags, two small boxes containing fifty tea bags are considerably cheaper than buying the large 100 tea bag box.
The most expensive brands in the supermarket will be on the middle shelves, the ones within your eye or reach level. The cheaper items are on the top or bottom shelves.
The things that children adore, but which parents would prefer them not to eat, are in their eye line. The sugary, coloured breakfast cereals are always at the height of a toddler sitting in a supermarket trolley. The healthy breakfast cereals are always on the bottom or top shelf. The same principal is the reason that supermarkets have those tempting displays of chocolate at supermarket checkouts just at the height of a standing toddler and the height of a toddler sitting in a supermarket trolley. The stores put them there deliberately so that children can slide them into mother’s trolley or for pester/tantrum power.
Supermarkets are especially sneaky in their tactics to make you spend more money than perhaps you would otherwise. The smell of fresh bread wafting across your supermarket, may not all come from the on site bakery, many supermarkets use artificial scents in their air conditioning systems. Often you will find the same goods in different places and different prices in the store.
When grocery shopping, take a shopping list and a calculator, to calculate weight for price whether things are really the bargain they seem. Do not buy anything that is not on your shopping list. Take a shopping list, when you are shopping for other things too, it helps you to avoid impulse buys.
Retailers all use sneaky tactics to part you from your money and tempt you to spend more than you wanted, when you are aware of their tactics, they cannot manipulate you so easily. However, it pays to remain vigilant and be a wise, prudent shopper. You have the power to resist once you know the shopping secrets that stores don’t want you to know.