Selling The Front Doors : A Grocery Store Essay

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.

Trader Joe’s is a major food retailer who has developed quite the name for themselves. It has well over 350 stores in over 32 states and is expected to continually grow over the next few years (Bond, 2012). For over 50 years, Trader Joe’s has been providing quality customer services, products and a unique shopping experience for its customers. They have come a very long way from when they first officially opened their doors. Trader Joe’s started when its founder Joe Coulombe wanted to find a way to differentiate his 7-Eleven stores (Schermerhorn, Osborn, Uhl-Bien & Hunt, 2012). In the food retailer industry, Trader Joe’s has developed a process that works well and

Trader Joe’s is an organic grocery food store that is one of the best known organic food chains. By listening to the consumer and adjusting to the changing consumer market, Trader Joe’s had built a brand equity that is continuously growing. Trader Joe’s faces stiff competition from other large organic food chains therefore must stand out and adapt to the consumers’ needs. Marketing strategies are important to communicate to the consumer more effectively and help target the consumer to their product. Trader Joe’s segments its products by psychographic, behavioral and demographic characteristics

Trader Joe’s is in the broad market of grocery retailers, a market where the top 10 revenue-generating companies accounted for over $360 billion in sales in 2011. This market is saturated with supermarkets (Publix and Kroger), large discount retailers (Wal-Mart and Target), premium retailers (Whole Foods and Fresh Market), warehouse clubs (Costco and Sam’s Club), and “hard discount” retailers (Dollar General). With this large variation in grocer strategies, the market is heavily penetrated and competition is fierce. Supermarkets are continually losing market share in grocery sales (51 percent in 2011 as opposed to 66 percent in 2001) as players like Wal-Mart and Costco continue to generate more revenue. Although the supermarket share is decreasing, the overall grocery market is steadily increasing as the population of the United States increases. People always need to eat, so there will always be a

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.

Operating on very thin profit margins, players in the supermarket industry traditionally either focus on a premium segment or follow a discounter strategy at the low end. Premium players address educated and more price elastic consumers who value healthy, natural and organic food; the share of perishable items for these players is normally distinctly higher. Players that focus on a discounter strategy offer a higher share of simple necessity items and value price competitiveness over premium features like healthiness or organic origin. Independently of the focused customer group it is imperative for players in the supermarket industry to be cost efficient and optimize operations

Grocery shopping is more diversified and evolved than ever before. Individuals across the nation have access to everything from exotic products to unique delivery services. Often, specialty stores have limited locations whereas specialty services have a limited reach. However, two retailers have expanded to hundreds of locations while adhering to unexpected market positioning for previously untargeted market segments. Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s have become household names while also innovating beyond regional and national traditional chains. Despite comparable size in

It is very easy to be amazed at the variety of products that can be found in today's supermarkets, all over the world. The United States in particular is a society of consumers, and many in this country would expect no less than full shelves of everything from produce, to meats, to snacks, etc. However, what most consumers today fail to realize is that the variety seen in most supermarkets in this country is really not too varied at all. In fact, the point that Michael Pollan aims to make in the first chapter of his book is just that: everything comes from corn. The paragraphs below will detail this author's beliefs in relation to today's consumer market, and focus on the ways in which most of us consume the products we are offered (often without questioning anything). Pollan's point will be stressed in this paper as well; namely, that today's society is suffering from poor nutrition and a lack of variety, due to the fact that 'everything boils down to corn,' as Pollan states, as well as the relative lack of education about the places from which one's food comes.

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.

“They (Food Production Corporations) may have salt, sugar, and fat on their side, but we, ultimately, have the power to make choices. After all, we decide what to buy. We decide how much to eat.” (Moss 346). In today’s society, junk food needs no introduction as everyone enjoys the taste of junk food because it is fast, tasty, and affordable but not everyone knows what all goes into their food. Over the years the food industries have drastically changed how food is produced and manufactured. Moss reflects upon the motivations and practices by the food industries which have transformed the American food supply by the use of the three key ingredients, salt, sugar, and fat. Through Michael Moss’s use of rhetorical appeals in his book Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, he discusses the extraordinary science behind what is considered tasty food, how multinational food companies use the key ingredients, salt sugar, and fat to increase sales and how other literary elements can help create trust between the author and audience thus increasing the effect of his arguments.

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.

Woolworths has capitalized on the idea of becoming ‘the fresh food people’. They have implemented various different ways to approach the customers by informing them of healthy food choices, as well as fresh food facts. They have created a website that informs them of how and where their produces are made. They create commercials of ‘Fresh Market Update’, which summarizes which fruits and vegetables are in season. Their magazines, the Fresh magazine and Australian Good Taste, are a monthly magazine that shows healthy recipes to recreate. This marketing push on their slogan reassures the customers that their choice in retailer to buy from is the healthiest choice.

nowadays, people do not know what they are eating. The majority of most Americans would not be able to pronounce the names of the ingredients listed on the package of the last snack food they consumed. Consumers “ignore certain critical questions about the quality and the cost of what they are sold: How fresh is it? How clean or pure is it, how free of dangerous chemicals? … When the food has been manufactured or “processed” or “precooked,” how has that affected its quality or price or nutritional value?” (Berry, 24) It is of utmost importance that we understand what the food that lines the grocery store shelves is actually

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.

Inside the front doors of a grocery store, customers are presented with a diverse, vibrant display of fresh fruits and vegetables. With its inviting rainbow of bright colors, the produce section leads past the wafting, sweets smells of bread and pastries in the bakery and through winding aisles stocked with an assortment of goods. Linings the aisles and fillings shelves are rows and rows of boxes of pasta, pre-made meals, processed foods, and more snacks and sweets than one would know what to do with. Grocery stores present shoppers with a myriad of choices. The shelves and displays are filled with a variety of different brands and options to choose from, which offers customers a tough and potentially stressful decision when shopping. However, before a customer decides upon a specific brand or item, whether that happens to be a name-brand product, competitor, or store-brand, they are faced with an even more important choice; they must first make a decision on whether they want to buy whole foods and produce, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthy choices, or more processed “junk” foods like sugary drinks and snacks or enriched breads and pasta. Not only must costumers decide between specific brands and deals, but they must also choose which of these types of food is best for them and their interests. Consumers must constantly weigh the different factors that are presented when comparing foods; between price, ingredients, health, availability, and overall