How Shopping In-Person Skews Your Perception of What Your Store Carries (and what you can do to change that)

How grocery stores stock their shelve and bins is part common sense and part marketing. The common sense part is rather obvious. Stores keep all of their frozen foods in one central location while all of their fresh foods in another. Foods are grouped by their storage needs. 

The other part for how stores stock their shelves and bins is marketing. You think you are seeing the complete selection the store has to offer, but marketing tricks us into primarily seeing the products that stores and manufacturers want us to see. The slogan "eye level is buy level" aptly applies here. Big brands negotiate with stores in order to garner that desirable eye-level portion for all of the departments. This section is highly visible to both shoppers and children riding in their parent's cart. It makes sense that products with the largest profit margin (and lowest value for dollar spent) would be placed in this section.

Shoppers typically view products on their own eye level and then down from there. Most of us know that the bottom shelf is typically the "value" section. This is where stores place house brand versions of less-flashy products. Think about dry cereal. Kellogg's Cornflakes are often placed just below eye level because this cereal doesn't have as much appeal to children and it has a rather slim profit margin compared to other cereals in the Kellogg's line. To find a house brand of cornflakes (the value alternative to more expensive dry breakfast cereals), one often looks on the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf is also where oversize bags of flour, sugar, rice, and beans are located -- all items considered "value" by savvy shoppers.

According to Small Business Trends, the top shelf is the least visible shelf to consumers. Grocery stores take one of two tacks on how to use this space. Some stores use the top shelf for the most expensive gourmet items, while other stores use this space for discounted items or house brands of lower stock items (products for which a store carries less stock -- at Walmart, an example would be Great Value canned Asparagus). 

As I switched over to online shopping (for curbside pickup) this past spring, I had a stunning revelation. Online grocery store shopping has not caught up with the tactics of in-store manufacturer product placement. You find a small amount of product placement on sites like Amazon, with "sponsored" products featured near the top of "results" pages. Yet when I search for an item on Walmart's website for curbside pickup, the default listing is "relevance". So, if I search "broccoli" on WM's site, the first item is Great Value frozen broccoli cuts, the least expensive (cost per pound) way for me to buy broccoli. When I search broccoli for curbside at my local Fred Meyer, the first item to show up is again the least expensive way for me to buy broccoli in their store this week. I will add, Fred Meyer has added "featured" items, which don't relate to my product search, that I suspect are just like Amazon's "sponsored" products, products/brands that pay to have their items placed in high view of the consumer when shopping online. I also searched broccoli at my local Safeway (another grocery chain). And again, one of the least expensive forms of broccoli appeared in the first space on the results page.

With this knowledge of a relative lack of product placement for online grocery shopping, we can shop for greatest value with fewer distractions and easier cost comparisons, without the need to adjust our view. 

Using online shopping tools to their best advantage

Checking frozen, fresh, and canned for different forms of same food

The search feature is invaluable. Being able to shop several departments or aisles of a store simultaneously is a game-changer for finding the best value for product categories. When searching "sweet potatoes",  the results page showed items from fresh produce, canned vegetables, and frozen vegetables. Unit pricing for each form is provided so I can quickly assess which I want to add to my cart. In the event that unit pricing isn't uniform (some priced per pound, others per ounce), the calculator on whatever device I'm using makes quick work of calculating best value. I am able to shop several different "aisles" all at the same time. 

Eliminating impulse buys made easy

In addition, I'm not impulse shopping at the checkout, on aisle end caps, or by eye-level placement of products. I realized the other day that I haven't bought Tic Tacs in almost a year! I also haven't bought any tempting bakery goods in this same period. It's hard to say how much I've saved by eliminating impulse shopping, but I do know that I've eliminated buying items that are mostly frivolous or expensive versions of something I could make at home.

Making smarter substitution choices by taking my time

You've probably experienced the following scenario. You plan a meal and the ingredients that you will need for it, only to get to the grocery store and discover they are completely out of the value version of one of the ingredients. In the heat of the moment, with other shoppers crowding around, perhaps on an empty stomach or overstimulated by all of the noise right around you, you have to make a quick decision on how you'll solve this dilemma. Product placement of the premium brand lures you into grabbing that item and popping it into your cart so that you can move on with the rest of your shopping. By filling my cart online, I get an idea beforehand which items are currently out of stock and I can take my time while still at home to rework my meal plan and/or list. I don't know about you, but I tend to make smarter choices when I'm still at home in the peace and quiet of my own private space.

Spending is completely in my control

As I add items to my order, the store's website keeps a running tab for me. I keep an eye on this, keeping me within my spending limit. I can review what I've added to my cart and remove quantity or items, if I feel I'm over spending. I can't tell you how many times I've been literally shocked by the total at the checkout when shopping in-person. I go in to pick up a few items, then I add an extra one or two of this and pick-up that other great deal or two, and before I know it, I've completely filled the cart! With online cart-filling, I watch the totals on the website as I add items to my virtual cart.

For those of us who are now shopping entirely online, we're learning all of this with each shopping experience.

One other tip for ordering online for pickup. If you're comfortable getting pick-up orders from more than one store in a week, try filling two or more virtual carts at different stores, shopping the best deals from each store. It's far easier to do pick-ups than in-person shopping at a couple of stores. You're only out the extra time and gas to grab that extra trunk load. 

And if you're still shopping in-person, here's my tip for you: Put together your shopping list from your store's website, filling a virtual cart as you make your list. (But don't check-out.) You may find forms of foods on your lists that are found in multiple sections of the store that you might overlook otherwise. For example, you can find ground turkey, hamburger patties, or chicken in both the freezer section as well as the fresh meat department, benefitting from best prices and the luck of availability of one option over another. You'll also be able to track your spending as you put items into a virtual cart and make those last-minute substitutions for items that are out of stock, all from the comfort of your quiet home. At the end of your virtual shopping exercise/making your list, screen capture your cart or write it down, then cancel your cart before an order is placed. 

For my family's groceries, utilizing my stores' websites for groceries has yielded big savings and turned up options that I didn't even know were available. I've been very pleasantly surprised to find a huge variety in frozen fruits and vegetables, variety that I never noticed before, because in the store, it was outside of my eye-level view.

Happy shopping and saving, friends!