Good Design: Grocery Stores
Smith’s in Provo, Utah [1]
The scent of freshly baked bread. Fresh fruits and vegetables with water droplets on them that glisten in the light. An entire end-cap display dedicated to your favorite cereal. Every little detail found in the typical grocery store was meticulously designed and implemented for a very important reason. Grocery stores have to strike a difficult balance between two seemingly contradictory objectives: (1) making the maximum amount of money possible and (2) providing shoppers with a positive experience. In a study, it was found that the two most contributing factors to making consumers spend more money and shop at a specific store again (indicating positive experiences) were the store atmosphere and layout [2]. Which means, the main tool used to maintain this balance is design! In this article, we’re going to identify some of the diabolical tactics grocery stores use to make you, the consumer, spend more money, but we’ll also appreciate the ingenuity of their design.
Most grocery stores have the same general layout (which is no coincidence) as follows:
Produce, floral department, and a bakery towards the front
Inner aisles with non-perishable items
Meat, dairy, eggs, and freezers along the sides
We’ll break down the individual reasoning behind each specific placement in the following paragraphs.
Layout of a Kroger store [3]
Front of the Store
The front of the store is meant to be an assault on the senses. Being stimulated with the appetizing smells and vibrant colors from the flowers, freshly baked goods, and produce make the average consumer happier and hungrier, and therefore more likely to spend money [4]. We all know how deadly it can be to have a grumbling stomach in the grocery store.
Some vegetables wilt when they have been sitting out for a while, so the misters in the display cases restore lost water content due to wilting and make the produce look more appetizing to customers. At the same time the misters are adding water, they are also adding weight and therefore cost to the vegetables that are sold per pound. Genius! So next time you’re at the store, you might save a couple of cents if you shake the water off of your head of lettuce before you put it in the bag.
Misters in the produce section [5]
If you pay close attention to grocery store workers when they stack pyramids of apples, you’ll sometimes see that they position the apples in a way that displays the better looking side outwards and the bruised side, if there is one, away from sight. This makes customers sometimes buy damaged fruit if they don’t check the other side and decreases the money lost due to unsold fruit. Also, fruit stickers are sometimes strategically placed to cover up blemishes. So if you really want to make sure you are getting your money’s worth, you can peel the sticker up a little bit to see if it is hiding anything.
Inner Aisles
Beware the cereal aisle! Especially if you are bringing little kids with you to the store! Sugary cereals targeted at children are almost always placed on lower shelves so children can more easily see them and beg their parents to buy them.
Cereal aisle with children’s cereal at a lower height [6]
Shelf spaces that are at eye level are highly coveted by companies who want more visual exposure for their products. Companies will actually pay more money so their products are on a good spot on the shelf. You’ll notice that expensive name brands usually have claim on prime shelf real estate, and that the cheaper no name brand products are lower down and further out of view. This is designed to maximize profit by also convincing customers that they are buying a more quality product. While in reality, many no name brand items are made at the same factories as similar name brand items [7].
Far Sides of the Store
It is no coincidence that basically every grocery store has essential items like milk, eggs, and chicken on the sides of the store. It is designed that way so most shoppers have to walk the entire perimeter of the store no matter how many or how few items they plan on buying. And if you walk around the whole store every visit, you are more likely to run into deadly promotional items and spend more money.
The world’s largest Costco in Salt Lake City, Utah [8]
Costco has seemingly perfected this tactic. Costco stores are gigantic; the world’s largest Costco is currently in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the inside perimeter is estimated to be a third of a mile long [8]. The milk is usually in a back corner of the store, so you have to walk the length of the entire store just to get milk. And along this lengthy journey there are free samples sprinkled throughout! Costco’s layout gives it the perfect opportunity to implement its free sample business tactic, which has been proven to boost sales of each sampled product by an average of 88% [9]. Getting tricked into spending more money never tasted so good.
One Solution for Countless Problems
In engineering, problems don’t come alone. They always bring other problems along with them. For example, no roller coaster ever designed by an engineer only had to be the best roller coaster ever. It also had to be within the specified budget, be integrated with the terrain, and follow local noise ordinances.
A sound barrier on Gold Striker, a wooden roller coaster at California’s Great America in Santa Clara, CA [10]
In roller coaster engineering, along with every other sub-specialty in engineering, engineers have to implement design tactics to solve countless problems with one solution. And that is what grocery stores are so good at. Things as simple as water misters, shelf organization, and free samples are commonly used to solve two problems at once: make stores more money while also making customers happy. So the next time you go to the store, I hope you can appreciate the incredible use of design principles while also being aware of some of the traps that grocery stores set for consumers.
Sources and Further Reading
[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Smith%27s_Food_and_Drug_store_in_Provo,_Utah.JPG
[2] Retail Shoppability: The Impact Of Store Atmospherics & Store Layout On Consumer Buying Patterns Priyanka Singh, Neha Katiyar, Gaurav Verma
[3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/129634001@N02/27279987305
[4] https://www.goodrx.com/well-being/diet-nutrition/grocery-store-layout
[5] https://joezaid.com/the-hazards-of-produce-misting-systems-in-stores-what-you-need-to-know/
[6] https://www.tastingtable.com/1623226/history-of-cereal-for-breakfast/
[7] https://ktla.com/news/consumer-business/dirty-little-secret-store-brands-are-same-as-others/
[8] https://mg2.com/news/largest-costco-in-the-world-officially-opens-today/#:~:text=It's%20estimated%20that%20the%20perimeter,third%20of%20a%20mile%20long.
[9] https://www.proquest.com/docview/223750092?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals
[10] https://negative-g.com/californias-great-america/2019/californias-great-america-2019-5.htm
