The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate Summary

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.

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.

She vaguely references research, stating, “This strategy, is based on research proving that, “the rate of exposure is directly related to the sale of merchandise.’” (Nestle,3) which is problematic in itself based solely on the fact that in psychological studies particularly, there isn’t really any “proof,” only support. This is a major hit to her credibility among scientists. She also lacks formal citations, making her already weak support even weaker. She proceeds to provide a list of rules tat govern the set up of supermarkets, once again completely unsupported and without any reference to where she got this list of rules. For all the reader knows, Nestle could have easily come up with these rules based only on her own experiences.

In 1975, Hi-Value Supermarkets became a division of Hall Consolidated, a privately owned wholesale and retail food distributor. In 2002, Hi-Value had sales of $192.2 million, which was the smallest out of the three supermarket chains owned by Hall Consolidated. Although Hi-Value is considered small against industry standards, they were the number one or two ranked supermarket chain in each of its trade markets measured through market share. The primary problem that Hi-Value has developed is that they are the highest priced compared to the competitors within the region. The Hi-Value Supermarket Shopper Interview Results (Exhibit 7 in case) demonstrates this through the question “Liked most about other regular store,” the most popular answer across the board was “Price.” So what is Hi-Value supposed to do?

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.

This Story takes place in 1961, in a small New England town 's “A&P” grocery store. Sammy, the narrator, is introduced as a grocery checker and an observer of the store 's patrons. He finds himself fascinated by a particular group of girls. Just in from the beach and still in their bathing suits, they are a stark contrast, to the otherwise plain store interior. Though it takes place over the period of a few minutes, it represents a much larger process of maturation. From the time the girls enter the grocery store, to the moment they leave, you can see changes in Sammy. At first, he sees only the physicality of the girls: how they look and what they are wearing, seem to be his only observations. It fascinates Sammy because he has never seen any girls like that come into the store especially Queenie. As they go about their errands, Sammy observes the reactions, of the other customers, to this trio of young women. Sammy wants to get out and do what teenagers do while on summer break and not just work in their parents store. In “A&P”, the social class and society expectations come hand in hand depending on the symbols throughout the story, in fact it allows the readers to get a full understanding of what went on in Sammy 's “World”.

Larger stores also offer people the convenience of additional services along with their shopping, for example post office, pharmacy and opticians. By addressing consumer’s expectations and using their buyer power they can offer a choice of products to reflect consumer’s diverse budgetary, dietary, ethical and environmental requirements. Furthermore their global buyer power enables consumers to benefit from choosing exotic produce all year round. With 30,000,000 customers (Bevan cited in Allen, 2009) choosing to use the big four supermarkets on a weekly basis it would suggest that they provide a format that consumers want.

This would suggest a weakness within the Whole Foods organizations as it only targets consumers who are willing to pay higher than average prices for groceries. The cost of

During the 30 minutes you spend on an average trip to the supermarket, about 30,000 different products are available to win your attention, and ultimately make you believe in the promise of the product, is the product worth buying, is the product going to be the quality that

This is so different from other supermarkets. Producers can directly control the selling of their products, which is more fair for both producers and customers.

This paper is a company analysis on Giant Hypermarket Malaysia in general, but specifically focusing on Giant Hypermarket Sabah. Giant Hypermarket is a major supermarket and retailer chain in Malaysia. It is a subsidiary of Dairy Farm International Holdings (DFI) and is headquartered in Shah Alam, Selagor. In this paper, firstly we focus our analysis in identifying the Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) of Giant; in addition, we constructed a SWOT Matrix for Giant where we identified the SO, ST, WO and WT strategies, which we think Giant should apply to improve their competitiveness. Next we focus our analysis on the external as well as the internal analysis on Giant. In the external analysis, we center our

     The main substitute to buying your food from a grocer is going out to eat. A 2002 Gallop poll shows that Americans eating more meals outside of the home than ever before. When examining today’s changing supermarket consumer in Progressive Grocer, Buck Jones made this observation: “To get the total picture we need to look outside the supermarket arena at how customers are using other retail outlets to satisfy the needs that we could be addressing.” The success

The UK supermarket industry resembles an oligopolistic industry, with several characteristics. Oligopolistic markets tend to be characterised by high concentration ratios, barriers to entry and…Since the turn of the century, the industry has been scrutinised by both the Office of Fair Trading and has been referred to the Competition Commission on two occasions. (Seely, 2012)

supermarkets like Tesco offering the biggest discounts in the UK and Sainsbury 's offering of substitute products too (Mintel, 2010). This shows the responsiveness and flexibility towards consumer needs in the supermarket industry.

Supermarkets are luring in consumers to buy convenient products. From personal experience, I had recently went to the Food lion grocery store near my house, walking from the entrance produce was to the far left, and then on the far right there is beer, wine, dairy. Also, there was sodas and chips on sale. That’s when the impulse came in because, I purchased two ginger ales, Tostitos chips, and dip. Another thing to add, the music was slower, not knowing that it would make me stay longer. There were three major aisle that consisted of junk food.