Engaging in supermarket psychology
It was a delicious coincidence.
I’ve been reading The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. It’s a 1957 book on advertising, particularly how companies were using the developing field of psychology to get people buying.
In his conclusion, Mr. Packard writes, “It seems to me that both the Advertising Research Foundation and the Public Relations Society of America might well concern themselves with drawing up realistic, up-to-date codes defining the behavior of ethically responsible persuaders.” In the polite world of the 1950s, this is the author throwing shade.
Chapter 10 of the book, Babes in Consumerland, is devoted to a relatively new wonder: the supermarket. Vance is morally opposed to the idea of people indulging their wants rather than satisfying their needs. The supermarket, therefore, is a fairly distressing shopper-manipulation laboratory. Of course, he might as well have been trying to stop a tsunami with a pie plate.
But the early science devoted to the grocery shopper is nonetheless fascinating. The base assumption is that the buyer is a woman with children. Quoting research by DuPont, he reports that “the mid-century shopper” doesn’t bother to make a list “but the wives always manage to fill up their carts.”
To encourage impulse buying, more foods were available in glass jars. Sales of “self-gratifying items” like candy and snack spreads was up substantially.
A researcher named James Vicary set up hidden cameras to record the eye blinks of overstimulated shoppers. What he discovered was a sub-normal 14 blinks a minute.
“The ladies fell into what Mr. Vicary calls a hypnoidal trance.”
Naturally, much thought was going into packaging. “According to some psychologists, a woman’s eye is most quickly attracted to items wrapped in red; a man’s eye to items wrapped in blue.”
And so, as luck would have it, a massive new supermarket opened in my neighbourhood. Surely, this would be a consumer persuasion paradise. I checked it out, channelling my inner Vance Packard.
First impression: The selling begins before you’re inside the second set of doors. A large vestibule features a great wall of toilet paper. The last word in the food consumption cycle is the first thing you see.
Next: In the store proper, it’s a display of fresh strawberries. Very bright, very tidy, very inviting. Then you look up and see massive messaging: “100 per cent satisfaction.” “We proudly serve sustainable seafood.” No risk. No guilt. It’s a good place to be.
The layout is of the modern module concept. Rather than plain old straight aisles, there are pods. There’s a pre-made food pod, there’s a florist pod, there’s an incredible cheese pod. An epic cheese pod. A cheese-pod-to-bring-you-to-your-knees pod.
These pods are not only attractive but, as Vance Packard might note, THEY’RE IN YOUR WAY. They prevent you from wheeling your cart from Point A to Point B and getting out quickly. You might only need oatmeal, but that self-serve bin of yogurt-dipped pretzels is hard to ignore.
Packaging does indeed favour reds and blues. And you won’t see a diaper anywhere on the diaper box. It’s a smiling baby or Mickey Mouse. The featured brand was in the aisle-facing power position and on the floor, maybe to invite the influence of toddlers. Ditto the breakfast cereal — the sugary stuff was at kid’s-eye-view, one of the oldest tricks in the book.
In the 1950s, researchers found that no one buys the last few things on a shelf. People buy more if the shelves are full. Nothing in the new supermarket indicates plenty like the endless row of upright coolers with pristine glass doors to maximize visibility. They continue into the horizon. You’ll never go hungry, you’ll never be frustrated by a lack of variety. Come, spend, be happy.
But of course, we’re more sophisticated than the Babes in Consumerland. We know their tricks by now. Anyway, I bet even Vance Packard would love yogurt-dipped pretzels.