How to effectively reduce your spending when shopping in supermarkets

Today’s post is about marketing; it’s actually about in-store consumer behavior.

A team of researchers recently discovered one incredible trick that effectively reduces what consumers are spending in the supermarket. Read further if you want to know what it is and apply it yourself.

Supermarkets profits are driven by unplanned buying behavior

You know what we mean. You have experienced it before. You’re in the supermarket and know in advance what you need to purchase. While in the first alley however you suddenly see in a fridge a nice-looking pesto sauce that you’d be delighted to try on your pasta tonight. You take two of it. Further down the alley the marinated meats await you and you realize that next weekend will be sunny and that you’d love cooking this meat on you new BBQ. You buy two packs of it. And so forth and so on … eventually you come back home with 15 items instead of the 5 or 6 you initially had in mind.

The supermarket is THE place where your mind opens up and where you are the most creative when it goes to spending your money.

Believe it or not there is a solution …

The solution to avoid unplanned purchases in the supermarkets

This solution is actually a very simple one. It’s called a shopping list.

A recent study proved scientifically that making shopping lists effectively reduce spending and helps you avoid impulsive purchase behaviors.

First of all, let’s start about the raison d’être of shopping lists. We do them for two reasons : memory effect (it’s hard to retain more than 5 pieces of information, especially over several hours) and to control spending.

A shopping list seems therefore to be used by consumers to focus attention and helps avoid visual distraction. Given that previous studies have shown that impulsive buyers are more sensitive to visual cues, you immediately understand the link that can be made : reducing visual distraction would lead to a better controlled purchase behavior.

Any list actually reduces impulsive purchase behaviors

If the previous hypothesis holds, any list would help focus the shopper’s attention and counterbalance a natural tendency to spend.

In a lab experiment the authors proved their two assumptions. First of all making a shopping list indeed reduces visual distraction and leads to decreased spending. But they also proved that the content of the list doesn’t matter. Any list will actually do the job and will help you control consumer spending behavior.

Which consequences for supermarkets ?

There is an unethical move that supermarkets could do to increase profitability : just suppress the shopping list holder on the shopping cart … Well maybe it’s really too unethical.

At least, what supermarkets should do, is to avoid giving a stick to be beaten with. In other words, don’t provide shoppers for instance with mobile application to record their shopping list and become more efficient. Or, as we have explained in another post earlier this year, don’t try to convert your customer base to online ordering and in-store picking. This is really the best way to make your customers so efficient that they will never be impulsive again.

By Pierre-Nicolas Schwab Dr. Pierre-Nicolas Schwab is the founder of IntoTheMinds. He specializes in e-commerce, retail and logistics. He is also a research fellow in the marketing department of the Free University of Brussels and acts as a coach for several startups and public organizations. He holds a PhD in Marketing, a MBA in Finance, and a MSc in Chemistry. He can be contacted by email, Linkedin or by phone (+32 486 42 79 42)