When shopping at the supermarket, do you ever feel like this: you only intended to buy a bag of milk, but when it's time to check out, you realize that your shopping cart contains several unplanned items? This isn't solely a matter of your "self-control". Behind it lies a carefully designed shelf philosophy by supermarkets, leveraging customer psychology.
Today, we will reveal the psychological strategies employed on the shelves that you may not have noticed but have deeply influenced your shopping decisions.
1. The allure of the "golden spot": capturing your line of sight
Supermarkets and hypermarkets are well aware of our habit of reading from left to right and from top to bottom, and they apply this principle to shelf layout.
Gold display line (generally 0.6-1.6 meters above the ground): This is the area where adults have the most comfortable visual experience and can easily reach. Most profitable products and popular best-sellers are concentrated here.
The mystery of "squatting down" and "looking up": shelves that are level with eye level usually sell the best. Therefore, children's toys and snacks are deliberately placed on lower shelves, just at eye level with children. While some affordable or bulk-packaged items may be placed at the top or bottom, requiring you to "struggle" to find them.
Psychological insight: Convenience dominates psychology. Merchants place the products they want to sell most where you can see and reach them most easily, reducing your decision-making cost.
2. Related display: Stimulate your "scenario-based" needs
Have you ever noticed that toothbrushes are always hung next to toothpaste, and peanuts and chips are often piled up next to beer?
This is called "related display" or "scene-based display". By creating a specific consumption scene (such as "brushing teeth" or "watching a game party"), it subtly stimulates your related needs, making you feel like "since I'm here, I might as well buy something together".
Psychological insight: Heuristic thinking. The brain prefers to take shortcuts. Under the hint of a complete scenario, we will accept the proposal of "combination purchase" without hesitation, thereby increasing random consumption.
3. Light and Color: Silent Emotional Conductors
The lighting on the shelves is not solely for illumination.
Warm lighting in the fresh food section: The red warm light on the meat counter makes the meat appear fresher and rosy; the yellow warm light in the bread section makes the bread appear softer and more delicious. This can directly stimulate your appetite and desire to buy.
Bright white light in the daily use area: The cleaning supplies and stationery areas usually adopt bright, cool white light, creating a clean, refreshing, and efficient atmosphere that aligns with the positioning of the products themselves.
Psychological insight: Emotions and perceptions are influenced by the environment. Proper lighting can create a specific atmosphere, directly affecting your subjective judgment of product quality and freshness.
4. "Tricks" in Price Tags
The art of price tagging goes far beyond just indicating numbers.
"9.9 yuan" effect: Pricing at 9.9 yuan instead of 10 yuan will make you psychologically feel that it's a magnitude cheaper. This is the classic "left-digit effect".
Font cues: Handwritten price tags are often used to convey a sense of "special offer", "handmade", and "freshness"; whereas neatly printed fonts convey a sense of "official" and "formal".
The illusion of cost-effectiveness in "bulk sales": A small label next to it reads "only X yuan per 100 grams", aiding you in quick unit conversion and making you feel that buying the larger package is "more cost-effective", even though sometimes you don't actually need that much.
Psychological Insight: Anchoring Effect and Actuarial Psychology. Merchants set a psychological anchor for you through the way prices are presented, and help you (seemingly) rationally calculate that the "winner" is yourself.
5. Path Design: Make You "Have to" Finish Shopping
Most supermarkets adopt a "forced circulation" design, with separate entrances and exits, and use shelves to guide you along a predetermined route (usually clockwise). This ensures that you will pass through the largest number of product areas, maximizing your exposure to the temptation of various goods.
Psychological insight: Exposure effect. The more times we see a certain product, the more we will develop a favorable impression of it, and the probability of making a random purchase will also increase.
Conclusion
Having understood these "little tricks" hidden in the shelves, next time you go shopping in the supermarket, you may as well bring a pair of "discovering" eyes. You can regard this knowledge as a "hand-cutting prevention" guide, or simply appreciate the subtle psychological interaction between supermarkets and consumers. After all, rational consumers are the ones who truly hold the initiative in this "game".
