Brits ‘not smart enough’ for grocery shopping
Slew of offers means shoppers “lack mental capacity” to make smart buying decisions
The average Briton is mentally ill-equipped to make smart buying decisions amid the thousands of tempting marketing messages they are bombarded with in-store.
However, it is the stores themselves that bear responsibility for the thousands of messages that confront shoppers each time they step into a store, a new survey claims.
Shoppers actually prefer the less-is-more approach, according to Phillip Adcock of retail analysis company Shopping Behaviour Xplained, who studied the in-store behaviour and canvassing attitudes of thousands of shoppers.
For example, in a recent study by Iyengar and Lepper, half of a test group was presented with six different flavours of jam and the other half with over thirty. Thirty-percent of those presented with six flavours made a purchase, compared just three-percent among those who had more choice. This solidifies the theory that 21st-century humans naturally opt to take shortcuts.
“In short, the average person is unable to make the rational decisions needed to find the best deals. It’s too mentally challenging due to the onslaught of money-saving deals, special offers and other marketing messages thrown in front of us as we walk down the aisles,” said Adcock.
Adcock said that in 1975 there were less than 9,000 products in grocery stores but today there are 50,000, often including hundreds of types of the same product.
“Wading through this and finding the best deal requires some serious mental effort, especially when one has to navigate a slew of special offers and advertising as we walk around,” he added. “Our study shows that most people can’t compute all of this and fail to actually find the best deal.”
Adcock claims that there is simply too much false or misleading data collected by grocery chains, who take what their sample of shoppers say as gospel. He adds that if those conducting the research relied on scientifically collecting and disseminating information, rather than taking any answer that they get, the stores would be run very differently.
“Around one in five products at a grocery store are on ‘special offer’, with most consumers being exposed to around four of these offers each second, as they shop,” said Adcock. “This is depressing and there’s no way your brain can handle the maths. This leads us to take more shortcuts, choose the product with the most perceived added value and almost always miss out on the best deal.”
The study concludes that most people should seek out the context of each offer, rather than just a lower listed price, which doesn’t always reflect the actual best deal. The problem is that the recently-evolved neo cortex in the brain – responsible for rationale – is relatively weak in its processing ability. The emotional part of the brain is far more powerful, operating three-thousand-times faster than a person’s rational thinking.
“The conclusion is that, whilst we’re being bombarded with marketing messages and trying to compute them, our brain hands the final decision to our emotions – which rely heavily on instinct and immediate gain. It pays no attention to consequence and almost always results in poor buying decisions. Letting our emotions decide the definition of ‘value for money’ is dangerous,” Adcock concludes.
To combat this, the research sets out some advice for taking back control:
– Always use a shopping list
– Have prices next to each product on the list (this can often be sourced from last week’s receipt)
– Consume energy-releasing foods before going shopping. Don’t shop tired and hungry
The research found that, with the average wage in the UK at around £12.50 per hour (Daily Mirror: 9th January 2014) and the average grocery bill totalling £98 (Guardian: 11th December 2013), saving 10% off each week’s grocery bill can make shopping time more productive than going to work.