You know that feeling when you come home with a “few” bags of groceries and you have no idea how it happened? There’s a high probability that you’ve fallen for at least a few marketing gimmicks. Vendors aim to maximize profit. To meet sales targets, they resort to various tricks. So it’s not just increasing revenue per item sold, but also selling you those items you never intended to buy in the first place. There’s much more, but the end result is one: An empty wallet, oh well..
Do not fall for them sales traps; be an informed, conscious consumer. Check out these marketing tricks exploiting millions of consumers everyday!
PRODUCT DISTRIBUTION IN STORE
Products in stores are deliberately arranged so that the most commonly purchased, so-called first-need products, are located away from the store’s entrance. Take bread, dairy or beverages.. If you thought you’re gonna quickly get in and out with your essentials, you’re wrong. This is a deliberate tactic used by retail chains. The buyer first has to pass through all sorts of shelves and glance – involuntarily – at products that are seldom bought, if at all. There’s a good chance you’ll find something more to buy. Worst case, those nachos and salsa will come in handy.
MIDDLE SHELF PRINCIPLE
It is said that expensive goods are those placed at the “top shelves”. Nothing could be further from the truth! The most expensive products are quite often placed at the level of our eyesight, within our reach. Other goods located below or above are usually cheaper. Sellers use this trick because they hope that after a very hard day, many tired customers will not scan through the shelves from top to bottom. Instead, they will reach for items within reach, those that are most conspicuous.
FRONT-END CHECKOUT DISPLAY
Certainly, each of us noticed that the check-out zone is rife with various products. We’re talking chewing gums, bars, pills or batteries.. These products are deliberately placed at the cash desks, because they are supposed to attract the attention of bored customers waiting in line for too long. And that’s a customer adds even more items into that cart.
PRICE ENDS
In stores or supermarkets, there are a lot of products with prices that end with 99. And for good reason… At first glance, $1.99 is perceived by the customer as better than $2.00, despite the fact that it is almost the same. Customers seem to be saving money because they subconsciously round $1.99 to $1 instead of $2. This is how our mind works, fascinating.
DISCOUNTS – FAKE SALE?
Sometimes there are occasions in which shops conduct the so-called fake sale. It consists of sticking a tag on the goods with a higher-than-original price crossed out as well as showing the “lower” one as “proof” of the discount. However, often these promotional prices are no different from the regular ones. Moreover, it may even happen that they even higher at times. One must view promotions with a fine line of distrust. Like they say, is it too good to be true?
SPECIAL OFFER 2+1
It has been scientifically proven that such a “promotion” increases profits by as much as 150%. Instead of saving, it turns out that this type of activity makes us spend much more money. When deciding to buy products via such a promotion, first let’s calculate whether we do not overpay and whether we need these specific goods to start with.
INVALID SHELF PRICE
If the price on the shelf is lower than at the checkout, protocol has it that the customer should pay the amount stated on the label. It often happens that when scanning the bar code, it turns out that the price of a given product is higher than that on the shelf. Hardly anyone checks the price charged on the receipt. Other times one comes to the conclusion that it is not worth arguing about these minor details. Consumer protection regulations are there to serve a purpose; yet they depend on active consumers who are willing to uphold those same laws.
FREE SHIPPING ON A SPECIFIC AMOUNT
Most frequently, stores determine certain thresholds above which an order is eligible for free shipping. However, these thresholds are optimized based on the store’s median and average orders so that a customer is always 10 or 15 dollars away from free shipping. And thus, the customer ends up adding anything haphazardly to the basket so as to avoid paying the delivery fee. And guess what? Someone always ends up paying more than they’d budgeted for groceries. Cancel those dinner date plans, nachos and Netflix instead?
LIMITED-TIME OFFERS
Another marketing ploy used by retailers is to foment the fear that a customer may miss out on a particular product due to “limited availability.” In this way, the seller encourages one to make ill-considered purchasing decisions.
IN A NUTSHELL
Consumers must be aware of the various marketing gimmicks if they are to make informed consumer choices away from being a product of some mathematical sales optimization formulas on corporate spreadsheets. Consumerism is a thing for a reason. But at what cost?
Moreover, consumers must up their game. With the advent of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, corporations increasingly using consumer analytics to track each customer’s unique consumer preferences and shopping habits to squeeze them bucks out of your wallet. And this is just the start. imagine a shopping cart that identifies you via your loyalty code. Imagine it tracking your movement in the supermarket, as well as the products you choose, the amount of time you spend in the bakery, meat section.. Imagine that you can checkout and pay using the shopping cart and not at the cashier. And of course, next week you get a highly customized promotional newsletter that offers unique discounts to you. That way, you ‘learn’ to buy those products that you’d never buy. A disturbing reality-in-the-making.
Check out this article for more on the most common advertising techniques here.
