I think we’ve all noticed that most if not all mainstream supermarkets locate their Produce departments immediately adjacent to the store entrance – the first thing you see when you arrive. Now a group of UK researchers has made a formal study of how that effects shoppers’ choices…
A modern supermarket Produce Department: Always the first
thing you see when you enter the store…
Maybe things are different in the UK than they are here, in Canada (and, from what I’ve seen, the US). But the new study by the University of Warwick Medical School (UWMS) seems to simply confirm what the supermarket industry has known for years: Put the produce up front to increase sales.
What they did…
Researchers analysed cash register data covering a period from 2012 to 2017 for the university campus student supermarket before, during and after the store changed its floor layout to put Produce right at the entrance.
What they found…
Not surprisingly (to me) the researchers found that sales of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 15 percent after the change in floor plan.
“Making the fruit and vegetables more accessible increased the amount of fruit and vegetables that were purchased,” says study spokesperson Dr. Oyinlola Oyebode. “This is exciting because, while we all know eating fruit and vegetables is healthy, supporting people to increase their fruit and vegetable consumption has been more complicated. This ‘nudge’ intervention in a young adult population, is particularly appropriate because it doesn’t restrict choice, and it doesn’t require any conscious action by the young adult.”
Did you catch the other major finding, there? The change to healthier eating habits ‘doesn’t require any conscious action by the young adult’. That’s good, because, if it did, I don’t think the millennials populating our institutions of higher learning just now would bother with it. Anyway…
My take…
As I mentioned earlier, mainstream supermarkets have known for years that placing selected products or product types right at the entrance to the store, and at point of sale (so you’ll grab them on impulse as you wait your turn at the till) are extremely effective strategies for increasing sales.
Our old friend, Dr. Obvious – recently returned from a sabbatical to study the relationship between ivory tower isolation in university researchers and the real-world value of their findings – opines as this study from UWMS stands as a perfect example of his new theory, that some ‘learned studies’ (particularly those that use non-typical test beds such as campus grocery stores rather than mainstream supermarkets, for example) simply tell us what we already know. I wonder how much navel gazing like the UWMS study is costing taxpayers each year?
~ Maggie J.