Perfect supermarket trip – he finds trolley and picks the queue, she does the shopping
IT’S the scene of countless family squabbles, as husbands and wives argue over what to buy and which till queue is the quickest.
But now the secret of a stressfree, speedy supermarket shop has been revealed.
To waste as little time as possible, the responsibilities should be divided between the sexes, with men finding the trolley and choosing the check- out queue, and women doing the actual shopping.
The advice follows a study of hundreds of supermarket customers, which found that women are quicker than men at finding and selecting groceries.
Men, by contrast, are better at acquiring a trolley or basket, queuing and checking out – or, as the Australian researchers put it, getting in and out of the store as quickly as possible. To find the rec- ipe for a perfect shopping trip, the researchers quizzed almost 1,200 men and women as they entered and left three supermarkets.
The customers’ shopping trips were timed and the number of items bought scrutinised.
This revealed the female shoppers to be around a third quicker than the men at locating and selecting items. The women took on average 13 seconds less to locate an item of food, decide which brand to buy and put their choice in their basket or trolley.
However, the men made up for this by being more efficient at entering and leaving the shop.
The average male customer spent just ten minutes and 24 seconds on tasks such as finding a trolley and queuing – almost four minutes less than the typical woman, the Australasian Marketing Journal reports.
The University of South Australia researchers said: ‘Our results indicate that men are more efficient than women at the portion of the shopping trip not associated with buying items – essentially, getting in and out of the store. This result supports prior findings that men place more importance on ease of access, parking and being able to get in and out quicker, and fits with prior findings that men finish shopping faster and purchase fewer items.’
They said it is possible that women may simply buy more, which prevents them from shaving off vital minutes by joining express queues. However, they gain time by making quicker decisions about which brands to buy.
Despite the stereotype of women having no sense of direction, they also seem to have ‘better in-store navigation skills’. The study found workers were more efficient shoppers than the unemployed, and older people took longer than the young.
Contrary to popular opinion, weekend grocery shops were no slower than weekday ones.
Researcher Tim Bogomolov said stores could use the findings to adapt their layout to better suit their customers. For instance, shops popular with the elderly could open more tills to reduce queuing times.
He added: ‘Enabling shoppers to complete their grocery shopping more efficiently … could result in higher shopper satisfaction and continued patronage.’
‘More efficient’