The Grocery Store has Got You Pegged

My "Food and Culture" class is fascinating and we get to learn things like this:


Interesting statistics about grocery shopping:

-31 percent of us arrive at the supermarket with a list. But it doesn't matter: only one-third of your purchases are planned. 

-According to one study, there are four types of guests: dieting, economizing, indulging and impressing guests.

-The consumer buys more soup if it is shelved out of alphabetical order. How much? If alphabetized, sales drop exactly 6 percent.

-Toothbrushes, if placed at eye level, will increase in sales by 8 percent -- no more, no less.

-Cereal arranged by type (flakes, brans) rather than brand will fall 5 percent in sales

-Milk at one end and bread at the other to force the shopper to trek the length of the place and will then buy more.

-Sixty percent of all supermarkets begin with produce; the others begin with flowers. "The idea is to introduce the consumer into a realm of freshness and crispness, of color and beauty."

All information taken from  The Theory Of Supermarkets by Jack Hitt in The New York Times Magazine on March 10, 1996


 Last week my roommate and I were at the local Stop & Shop grocery store and we had a very limited time to get everything we needed. I rushed through picking up everything I thought I needed, and when I got home and assessed, I ended up with 4 cans of soup. I don't even like soup that much. I feel like I was tricked!


What kind of grocery store guest are you? Do you make shopping lists? Do you ever some home with things you just didn't need?


Any tips for "beating" the grocery store?