{"id":966,"date":"2012-09-28T18:34:48","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teekhapan.wordpress.com\/?p=966"},"modified":"2012-09-28T18:34:48","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T13:04:48","slug":"call-of-the-mall-tricks-they-use-to-make-you-spend-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/2012\/09\/28\/call-of-the-mall-tricks-they-use-to-make-you-spend-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Call of the mall: Tricks they use to make you spend more"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"<\/a> <\/strong>
\nVivek\u00a0<\/strong>Kaul<\/strong>
\nOn a recent visit to a refurbished supermarket I was surprised to see a bakery right at its entrance. What it clearly told me that Indian retail was finally catching up with its global counterparts when it comes to marketing. Now you might like to believe that having a bakery as a part of a supermarket is a perfectly natural thing. But there is more to it than what meets the eye.
\nSo why do most modern supermarkets have bakeries right at their entrances?\u00a0 Martin Lindstrom has the answer in his book Buyology <\/em>\u2013 How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong. <\/em>As he writes \u201cNot only does the fragrance of just-baked bread signal freshness and evoke powerful feelings of comfort \u00a0and domesticity, but store managers know that when aroma of baking bread or doughnuts assails your nose you\u2019ll get hungry \u2013 to the point where you just may discard your shopping list and start picking up food you hadn\u2019t planned on buying. Install a bakery, and sales of bread, butter, and jam are mostly guaranteed to increase. In fact, the whiff of baking bread has proven a profitable exercise in increasing sales across most product lines.<\/em>\u201d
\nIn fact Lindstrom even points out that some Northern European supermarkets don\u2019t even bother with setting up bakeries they just pump artificial fresh-baked bread smell straight into the store aisles from their ceiling vents. \u00a0In some cases a florist shop or a cookie store comes into play. \u00a0\u201cSmell and sound are substantially more potent than anyone had even dreamed of\u2026All of our other senses, you think before you respond, but with scent, your brain responds before you think<\/em>,\u201d writes Lindstrom.
\nMusic also has a role to play in this. Ever wondered why supermarkets generally tend to play soothing music? This is to slow down the consumer so that he takes time to look around the items in the supermarket.
\nAnd this is not the only trick that supermarkets malls and companies use to get you to buy more than what you may need and even things you may not need.
\nAnother favoured trick is to offer something extra free rather than pass on an equivalent decrease in price to the consumer. Now this sounds a little complicated so let me explain this through an example that Akshay R Rao, a marketing professor atthe Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota in the United States, discussed with me in a recent interview.
\n\u201cImagine that I am selling coffee beans, and I offer you 100 beans for Rs. 100 on a normal day. Then, one day, I offer you a 33% discount, so you receive 100 beans for Rs. 67. On another day, I offer you 50% extra (or free). You now get 150 beans for Rs. 100. But, I impose no limit on how many or how few coffee beans you can buy, on either day. So, on the day in which I offer 50% extra, you could quite easily have bought 100 beans for Rs. 67! Yet, most people prefer 50% more to a 33% lower price, even though the two options are economically equivalent<\/em>,\u201d said Rao. (You can read the complete interview here<\/a>)
\nThis inability of the consumers to distinguish between the options is exploited by businesses. Bookstores often resort to this trick. As Paul Ormerod writes in Positive Linking \u2013How Networks Can Revolutionise the World <\/em>\u201cMarketers observed\u2026that discounts offers such as \u2018buy one, get one free\u2019 or \u2018three for the price of the two\u2019 \u2013 a concept I am very keen on because this is how bookstores often package up their offers \u2013 tend to be more effective is boosting sales than the exact equivalent price reduction on a single purchase. The amount of money which is paid for the bundle of products is identical in each case, but more will usually be bought if they are packaged under an offer than if there is a simple equivalent reduction in the individual prices<\/em>.\u201d
\nAnother trick used to great effect by retailers is contrast effect. It has been put to great use by retailers as well to increase the attractiveness of certain products. A 1992 research paper written by Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky, shows this through an example of a retailer who was selling a bread making machine. The machine was priced at $275. In the days to come the company also started selling a similar but larger bread making machine. The sales of this new machine were very low. But a very interesting thing happened. The sales of the $275 machine more or less doubled. As an article on the website of the Harvard Law School points out \u201cApparently, the $275 model didn\u2019t seem like a bargain until it was sitting next to the $429 model.\u201d (You can read the complete article\u00a0here<\/a>)
\nThis is a trick used by retailers all over the world to great effect. By displaying two largely similar but differently priced products, the sales of the product with the lower price can be increased significantly by making it look like a bargain.
\nRetailers often use this trick to promote their own brands by placing their own cheaper products against more expensively priced other brands. Tim\u00a0Harford\u00a0points this out in his book\u00a0The Undercover Economist<\/em>– \u201cIn Dalston, Sainsbury\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0(a big retailer) own brand of fresh chilled juice was sitting next to the Tropicana at about half the price., and the concentrated juice was almost six times cheaper than the Tropicana<\/em>.\u201d
\nYou would be surprised to know that malls and supermarkets are even built in a way so as to encourage people to shop more. In a multi floor store, typically the women\u2019s apparels are on the first or the second floor. This is because women are likely to go the extra distance to shop for something than men. Also, a lot of things that can be bought instinctively and do not require much thought are placed near the payment counter so that people can almost pick them up mindlessly while making the payment.
\nIn fact the reason why most food courts are on the top floor of the mall is because the retailers want you to buy more and pick up things you hadn\u2019t planned to. This is done by ensuring that in order to reach the food court you have to go through the length and the breadth of the mall and in the process you might pick up something along the way. The smarter individuals might just take the lift to the food court. But then once a person reaches a mall the tendency is to loiter around for a while.\u00a0 This also explains why there are multiple escalators in a big retail store or a mall. This is done to ensure that once you are in the mall you go through a large part of it.
\nSupermarkets use the same logic and ensure that essential items like wheat, rice and vegetables are placed inwards in the store. This is to ensure you to go through the entire store and thus increase your chances of picking up something you hadn\u2019t planned to. The next time you are at a big supermarket try buying an essential item like milk and see the sections that you pass by the time you have found the essential you are looking to buy. Chances are you might find chocolates and other junk food along the way.
\nSupermarket shelves are also strategically planned. The more expensive items are typically around the middle shelves to ensure that they are at the eye height of the consumer. The cheaper products are rather right at the top or at the bottom. This ensures that a consumer might just be lazy and buy the expensive product. There is also a psychological aspect at play. The supermarket by placing the expensive products in the middle is trying to project it as a quality product in comparison to the ones placed in the top or the bottom shelf.
\nSo the next time you are at a supermarket or a mall be aware of these tricks and don\u2019t get caught in the trap of buying things you did not plan to in the first place.
\nThe article was originally published on www.firstpost.com on September 28,2012.\u00a0http:\/\/www.firstpost.com\/business\/call-of-the-mall-tricks-they-use-to-make-you-spend-more-472689.html<\/a>
\nVivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at vivek.kaul@gmail.com <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vivek\u00a0Kaul On a recent visit to a refurbished supermarket I was surprised to see a bakery right at its entrance. What it clearly told me that Indian retail was finally catching up with its global counterparts when it comes to marketing. Now you might like to believe that having a bakery as a part of … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,14,33],"tags":[208,578,792,2182,2233,2687,3392,3414,3533,3772],"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"Vivek Kaul","author_link":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/author\/vivekkaul\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Analysis<\/a> Business<\/a> Firstpost<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Vivek\u00a0Kaul On a recent visit to a refurbished supermarket I was surprised to see a bakery right at its entrance. What it clearly told me that Indian retail was finally catching up with its global counterparts when it comes to marketing. Now you might like to believe that having a bakery as a part of…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vivekkaul.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}