Although it may not seem like it, a supermarket cart hides various psychological tricks to make you buy more. The goal of a supermarket, from the moment you walk through the entrance, is to make you buy. And to achieve this, department stores use all available resources and information about human behavior. To understand the mind of the consumer, these corporations rely on psychology.
<The supermarket cart hides secrets to get you to buy more
Scrutinizing the brains of your customers through neuromarketing and analyzing their social dynamics when it comes to buying. They go to great lengths to get you to buy more than you should. Do you think it’s exaggerated? Well, bring to mind the image of the typical shopping cart. At first glance, it looks like a simple metal basket on wheels that streamlines self-service.
However, a shopping cart conceals various techniques to influence your behavior inside the store. Of course, always looking for you to buy as much merchandise as possible.
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The noise of the grocery cart.
Psychology allied to marketing has provided shopping carts with multiple techniques to boost consumption. And even if you don’t realize it, most of the time they work very well. I’m sure your brain has very well registered the characteristic sound that grocery carts make when you push them.
Especially when you pull out of the parking lot, at which point the little wheels start to wobble and vibrate as if they’re loose. It may be due to lack of maintenance or carelessness on the part of the store. But, most of the time it’s a psychological trick. The faster you push a grocery cart, the louder it becomes.
Unconsciously, most of us experience some embarrassment by attracting too much attention within the commercial establishment and slow down to reduce the noise. At that point, your brain tends to wander and you’re much more likely to pay attention to the products on the shelves. Another supermarket cabinet designed to make the consumer want to take more products.
Size does matter.
Another trick employed by companies has to do with the size of the cart. Many times, you go to the supermarket ready to buy a minimum amount of items. It is true that there are small baskets, but they are somewhat scarce and the most common thing is to find huge carts everywhere. Have you ever caught yourself taking more stuff than you planned only to feel like the cart was “full”?
This is another psychological trick. Unconsciously, customers tend to grab more stuff from the shelves to take up the huge empty space in the shopping cart. When they arrive at the checkout with a practically empty cart, they automatically experience a certain “social awkwardness” as a result of the apparent scarcity.
The crazy wheel of consumerism in the supermarket cart.
Have you noticed that many carts have an almost loose “idler” that sometimes spins out of control? It costs the big supermarkets nothing to repair those wheels to avoid the painful situation for consumers. You’d think they would do so, otherwise customers would have to leave the store to grab another cart.
But, the theory suggests that that crazy wheel could be another psychological trick, producing a feeling of embarrassment when having to leave to grab another cart. In fact, most choose to keep pushing the damaged cart and wandering even further around the premises. This situation encourages consumers to spend more time inside the supermarket and see a greater number of products on the shelves. Increasing the odds that you will spend more money. 🛒
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