Why do they change everything around in grocery stores?

[Phentex]

Every few years, the stores do a major overhaul. I know they do extensive research about food placement, but why do they keep changing it? Is it just so we'll go down every aisle again? It can be so annoying!

[BarbaRosa]

1. A distraction from rising prices?

I don't know, but yes it is annoying.

[Phentex]

17. could be....

guess it gives the employees something to do!

[livetohike]

2. It's to keep the customers in the store longer

so the customer will impulse buy something they see that they may not have seen otherwise. The endcap displays at the end of aisles are always changing for that purpose.

My b-i-l retired from Trader Joe's so I have the inside track on the psychology of store set up :-).

[hippywife]

3. Yep.

They set things up according to the latest psych studies on which set ups will make you purchase more. I'm sure they pay for those studies, too.

[Lugnut]

4. My daughter is a marketer.

She tells me that marketers know more about peoples' shopping habits than we think they do.

[hippywife]

5. I don't doubt that in the slightest, Lugnut.

It's kinda creepy, like being stalked! :rofl:

[Lugnut]

6. Yes it is.

I get so annoyed when they move things around at the store but I know why they're doing it. They're reading our minds. Cue the theme from the Twilight Zone. :)

[skorpo]

39. If I spend more time in a store I start putting things back....

It gives me more time to decide whether I really need the items in my cart.

[tigereye]

7. you mean every few months? :D

yes, it's incredibly annoying, I expect it's related to the different vendors and companies paying more for product placement, or changes in what people are buying.

[Warpy]

8. Not in my neighborhood grocery

Every couple of months, they move whole aisles and even change the makeup of those aisles, like putting cereal on one side and coffee on the other one month and moving the whole shebang over a couple of aisles and putting cereal facing the dairy case.

I don't know what the thinking is, but it's getting beyond annoying. I've found that I spend less these days because I can't fucking find what I went in there to get.

I have a feeling it is a marketing ploy, but I doubt it's a very successful one. It might keep people in the store longer, but most of them will be as annoyed and frustrated as we are, and that increases sales resistance.

[Phentex]

15. I hate when I think they are out of something only

to discover it's been temporarily moved to another section!!! WTF?

[salvorhardin]

40. I agree. Supermarkets are the worst.

I loathe supermarkets. Or rather I long for the "good old days" of the 1980s when grocery stores started expanding their selection to include fresh fish, a wider variety of produce and "international" items but still had logical, consistent layouts. These days it's getting harder and harder to find what I'm looking for. Frozen chicken? It's in the ice cream aisle! Tortillas? They're in the dairy case! At least the inexpensive ones are. The expensive kind are next to the salsa, which is in the international aisle and not with the other condiments. Prepared pie filling? Let's see... is that a canned fruit or is a baking accessory? Condensed cream of mushroom soup? Should be with all the other canned soups, but not this week because it's on sale. Look for the center aisle display, right between the Fruit Loops and the potato chips!

It's especially frustrating to me because I like to plan (some would say obsess over) my shopping lists and order the items by aisle so I don't forget anything. I realize that I'm exactly the kind of consumer the stores hate, but that's OK because I hate them right back.

[Phentex]

41. You have jogged my memory...

the tortillas ARE in several different places, lol! I forgot about that.

[Retrograde]

9. To annoy me?

It's one of the reasons I avoid Safeway and similar mega-marts. They're huge, they're full of stuff, and it takes forever to find what I actually want. As a result, I end up fleeing in frustration before I'm halfway done.

It's done to encourage impulse buying: put the ingredients for pumpkin pies all at the end of an aisle (but no actual pumpkin, just "pie filling") along with a few semi-related objects and maybe some people will spend just a little more.

[katkat]

10. yes

That's why I hardly ever go to Stop&Shop.

The store is so huge and there are never any clerks around who you can ask where the heck is X now, so I wind up traipsing back and forth the length of the store three times or something. And half the checkstands are automated, so no humans to ask there either. (I never use the automated checkstands. Why put someone out of a job, plus is Stop&Shop paying me to do the checkout?

[Phentex]

16. I'm not as annoyed at that sort of thing...

baking supplies moved to a section around the holidays. Maybe that helps someone. But they don't need to move every frickin item from its regular spot just for the holidays!

I'm not this cranky usually. :blush:

[surrealAmerican]

23. You've got a point.

The larger the store, the worse the problem, but even smaller supermarkets can drive me nuts with this. If I want to compare prices on, say, canned chickpeas, I now need to look in three separate isles, and that's a small, older supermarket.

[Phentex]

24. I was looking for Ro-tel with the canned vegetables/tomatoes and

another lady was looking for chili beans. We could not find either one. Turns out the Ro-tel was with the Mexican foods on another aisle - okay, I can see that - but the chili beans were on yet another aisle next to the pans/housewares. We would not have found them without help!

Maybe they are doing a study on patience! :)

[azurnoir]

11. Bingo because creatures of habit that we are

we know where in the store what we buy is located so they change up to make have to wander BUT notice what does not change is that usually things like meat, produce, and dairy are located on perimeters

[kentauros]

12. Those things are on the perimeters partly because

it's so difficult to move refrigerated cases around ;)

I am thankful the meat sections in most stores are on one side of the store (not so at Whole Foods, where it's usually at the back) and I can bypass them by making a beeline to the first aisle or produce :)

[Phentex]

14. The dairy is what annoyed me most...

the cheese is now across from a frozen food aisle. But not all of the cheese, just some of the cheese. The milk isn't anywehre near the cheese or yogurt. It's like they've scattered the dairy throughout the store!

You're right about the meat and produce. It's in the same place but the non-regrigerated juices have joined the produce area. I am amazed at how many different kinds of juice/gatorade exist in the world!

[elleng]

13. Its FUN!

Give the employees something to do, and watch the customers trying to locate their favorites!

:rofl:

[Phentex]

18. I said something similar

upthread before I read this, lol. :)

[Stinky The Clown]

19. The last time our store did that I almost stopped going there

I'm into geezeritude and don't do well with change. Had they added something to the store, I wold have been okay. They didn't. They just shuffled things around.

[katkat]

20. geezeritude

Doesn't make it easy doing those three laps of the huge store either for just one item. You can bet other items not found don't get looked for.

[katkat]

21. thoughts

Stop & Shop: customer unloads cart, checks items out
regular supermarket nowadays: customer unloads cart, checker checks items out
Trader Joes: checker unloads cart, checker checks items out

I am getting quite fond of Trader Joe's, even though they don't carry a lot of stuff. Plus, it's the cheapest of the bunch.

By the way, for youngins thinking I'm lazy, after a certain point hauling 12 packs of 16 oz Snapple bottles into and out of the cart is non-trivial.

[Stinky The Clown]

22. A Snapple alternative that is easy to carry - and maybe better for you

There are more flavors than this, too. Each box has 10 tubes, each as big as your finger. Very light to carry. Just add water. We switched to these and similar products from other companies.

My very favorites are the White Cran-Peach from Ocean Spray and the White Grape from Crystal Light.

[Phentex]

25. You see? This is why the juice dept has taken over produce!

:P

[katkat]

26. are those packages recyclable?

Snapple comes in glass.

[Stinky The Clown]

27. The boxes are surely recyclable. I know we always recycle them. The tubes, probably not.

I contend they are FAR greener than trucking all the water associated with Snapple or any other such drink. Plus the energy to recycle the glass. Plus they are WAY easier to carry into the house, which was the genesis of this subthread.

[katkat]

30. my concern about plastic

is I always remember Ray Bradbury's thing about it still being here when the sun goes nova. Energy use tends to dwarf compared to that.

Plus those plastic islands strangling sea critters in the ocean. And I don't trust the government and manufacturers a millimeter when they say it doesn't leach harmful stuff into food.

[Stinky The Clown]

32. The plastic safety seal on a snapple bottle is about the same volume as the tubes holding the powder

So, if that's equal, the powder seems to me the greener choice.

[katkat]

35. the 12 paks do not have plastic seals n/t

[Warpy]

31. Get a CO2 setup

The bottles are reusable and the canisters are recycled and refilled. The only plastic crap is the housing for the canister and the bottles, all of which are multiple use. It's great for turning filtered water into the best seltzer you've ever had and the flavor mixes are pretty good, too.

It's not so good for trying to make your own sparkling cider. CO2 doesn't dissolve into sugary water and tends to fizz over. You can, however, add fruit concentrates to it after you've fizzed the water with fair success.

The best part is that the contents don't sit in the bottle for weeks, leaching all sorts of nasties out of the plastic.

I'll have to check out the non cranberry tubes of concentrate. I lived on Cape Cod too long, gleaning cranberries after harvest and turning them into Xmas presents ever to face the damned things again, even in juice.

[katkat]

36. yummy cranberries :-)

I always have dried cranberries in stock. I use them in most things that call for raisins, or for snacks or in salads. Would you believe they're great in egg salad?

[Warpy]

37. Would you believe you get sick of a steady diet of anything?

[blaze]

28. Did you ever notice after one of these mega-changes

the cashiers stop asking you, "Did you find everything okay?"

Probably a self-survival thing. :grr:

[hippywife]

34. Our local grocer moved things around

and then they also moved into a larger building. They actually hired additional staff to assist people in finding what they need and every employee you pass asks you if you are finding everything, as does the cashier.

[eleny]

29. This is a pet peeve of mine

Last time it happened I complained to several people in the store. When the lady working the meat counter asked how I was doing I said I was fine until I walked in and found the store got shuffled - again. I didn't give her a hard time but sort of complained that the store was making it difficult. She even said they do the same thing with the meat dept. The employees know how it is since they shop, too. This practice really chaps me off.

[calico1]

33. It's done to get you to impulse buy.

Most regular customers of a supermarket get familiar with the layout of the store. So you go with your list and go to where you need to go, buy what you need and leave.

But then they change everything around. Now you have to go hunting for what you need....and when you do you will pass by items and hopefully buy some of them.

It is not done to keep the employees occupied. There is always a reason and getting you to buy more items is the reason they do this.

It's just like the placement of certain items. Notice the sugary cereals for example, are usually at eye level with a child while the healthier stuff is at your eye level and the least expensive stuff usually high on the high shelf or the bottom shelf.

[randr]

38. The last time they did that at our local market

everyone suspected that they may start charging by the mile.