Grocery Observation

We have all been to a supermarket or store at some point in our lives. Have we found ourselves placing items in the cart that we did not come to buy, and why is that? Is there a reason the products we need are located in the back of the store? Marion Nestle wrote an article entitled, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” She teaches in the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University. Nestle writes a column regarding food for the San Francisco Chronicle. Shortly after reading the title, one can determine Nestle opposes supermarkets. “Prime Real Estate,” indicates that large supermarkets are feeding grounds for them against unsuspecting customers. Supermarkets can determine what somebody will buy, based on where the store places certain products. The general argument made by Nestle in her work, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate, is that supermarkets are taking advantage of our unconscious mind and we are purchasing products on impulse.

Before I report my results, I must explain how I conducted my observation, or my research methods. To say that I only walked a lap around the Walmart store and left would be far from the truth. I dressed like an average shopper even making sure to grab a buggy. I started my observation in the grocery department, making the transition to the electronics,

Whenever I go to Stop & Shop, I tend to take interest in the thousands of products that surround me as I walk down an aisle. The wafting aroma of freshly baked pastries and the sight of cold soft drinks are just some of the things that trigger my appetite for food. Most often, I find myself buying more than what I originally planned on. That’s exactly what the layout of a supermarket tries to make consumers do. Marion Nestle argues in her article, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate”, how supermarkets employ clever tactics such as product layout in order to make consumers spend as much money as possible. She covers fundamental rules that stores employ in order to keep customers in aisles for the longest time, a series of cognitive studies that stores perform on customers, and examples of how supermarkets encourage customers to buy more product. Overall, Nestle’s insight into how supermarkets manipulate people into spending extra money has made me a more savvy consumer and I feel if more people were to read her article, then they can avoid some of the supermarket’s marketing tactics as well.

I am researching the gender, age, and race of the people at the university center that order Chic-Fil-A. I decided to research this because I have noticed the crazy long line during lunch ever since they opened the restaurant in the beginning of the year. I thought it would be interesting to learn which students at the school are the top buyers. Eating patterns are something that I was able to see during this observation. With all the new fast food, corporate restaurants that are coming to campus it’s easy for students to get fed at a faster

Ever walk into a store with a defined list, but still get other items you never intended to get? Well, in Marion Nestle’s article “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate,” Nestle goes into detail about how the supermarkets in your daily life uses many tricks to get you to buy items and spend money. Nestle claims that supermarkets and their managers study habits of shoppers to gain the control using certain tactics. According to Nestle, “This research tells food retailers how to lay out the stores, where to put specific products, how to position products on shelves, and lastly how to set prices and advertise products” (Nestle 498). Some tactics that Marion Nestle mention are product location, music, and even item size. During the course of my paper I will convince you that these tactics are in fact real and bring more to your attention. Us consumers have to stick together and this is the first step.

The others were excluded due to not meeting the qualifications of being a licensed food store and the owner choosing not to participate. East Harlem had 173 stores that participated, which consisted mainly of small bodegas and Upper East Harlem had 151 stores, which had far fewer bodegas and more supermarkets. The research results discovered that Upper East Harlem stores were 3.2 times inclined to have all the item in stock and was considered desirable stores (Horowitz et al.,2004). The cost of the items was higher in Upper East Harlem as compared to East Harlem. East Harlem had more stores in the proximity of its community (Horowitz et al.,2004). These findings suggest that further studies are needed to figure out why East Harlem, having twice as many stores but only 18% of their stores carried all five items as compared to 58% for Upper East Harlem (Horowitz et al., 2004). The article reference that prior studies in 2002 which noted that conveniences and location of dietary food as being more important to minorities and people of low social, economic status. Many minorities depend on small bodegas for their shopping which are the stores that do not always carry to best nutritious food. The whites do not have a problem with going out of their community to shop for better food selections. They have more, large supermarkets in their communities, which usually have

On the above date I was conducting an area check of Walmart on foot with loss prevention.

This experiment observed students and their activities in a food court. During the observations there were many groups of students not eating lunch just sitting around and talking. Several students were studying or engaging in other activities on their laptops mainly Youtube (the video sharing platform). One group stayed there for the duration of the observations discussing back and forth about their day. Many students would enter the food court, pick up food, and then proceed to sit down. Upon sitting down am majority of the students would pull out some form of entertainment such as a book, their ot cell phone, and engage with it. This engagement, a statistically significant number of times, would detract from the main purpose of the area

When entering a grocery store, most people don’t take the time to stop and observe their surroundings, for their soul purpose at that instant is to purchase what very food they may need for that day or maybe even for that week. However, through all the haste of wanting to go in and out of grocery stores as fast as one can, most are unaware of the very culture that they too are now apart of, the interactions, both verbal and through people’s body language that they are experiencing, how people look and dress, even what is considered appropriate behavior although not specifically written down. Culture is all around us, and we all contribute to it, whether it is through our norms, values, symbols, or mental maps of reality (Guest 2014, 38-43). That is why through this assignment, I took the time to observe the culture experienced in the American grocery store Stater Brothers, the ethnical Filipino grocery store Seafood City, while also taking the time to reflect on my own personal views of what I thought was “normal” through my experience working in Northgate Gonzalez Market, a Mexican grocery store for three years.

On Saturday, November 14th of 2015 I visited the Maine Mall from around 2:50 pm to 4:30 pm to make observations of adolescents from another culture. I chose to visit the Maine Mall because it is a place where adolescents frequently visit to socialize with friends in a public place. The place that seemed most obvious to observe was clearly the food court. The food court gathers people of all ethnicities and ages to sit down and be themselves while enjoying a meal. I found a comfortable table on the outskirts of the food court where I was able to be the eyes and ears of the whole place. This place was essential because I had perfect view of three different groups of teenagers sitting in groups of three or four.

I decided to conduct my field observation in the great state of Louisiana. I had a business trip to the party capital of the world, New Orleans. The bar scene was the perfect setting to observe a diverse group of people for a long period of time without bringing attention or suspicion to myself.

Have you noticed the issues of how people in our culture think about and acquire food? For this assignment I have observed food acquisition at a grocery store. The data collection is consisted of two separate parts: fieldwork notes part one and brief interviews part two. The verbal questionnaire’s (mini- interviews) lasted from 2-5 minutes per person out of the ten individuals. The observations are broken down into blocks, meaning I observed the exterior and interior of the store. I under took the project at the Whole Foods Market located in Beverly Hills. I have shopped at whole foods numerous times, but decided that I should observe a location I have not been to. As a result my observations of the store do not get clouded by my opinions.

1. The presence of self-service checkout lanes and or service employees are part of the physical surroundings in Albertson’s store atmosphere, or environment.

Grocery Gateway would like to increase their deliveries from 2.7 to 4 per hour. Dominique Van Voorhis, vice president of industrial engineering and operations systems, must provide recommendations for improving and optimizing the delivery operations.

The behavior was observed from a large sample of people. This included twenty people shopping alone and twenty people shopping in a group, for a total of forty subjects, each ranging in ages from approximately 19 to 40 years old. The subjects were observed from the time they entered the store until the time they left. The reasoning behind this was to see the buying behavior differences for the whole experience and figure out which areas of the store could be improved in order to appeal to groups of people shopping. The behaviors observed included the amount of time spent inside the store, the amount of money spent, the interactions with associates, and the areas of the stores that were navigated.