By Yiler Huang
In a supermarket, the marketers often use variety of ways to make the people spend money in the store. I made an observation at one of the QuanLian supermarket and spotted some messages or inputs that are being passed to the customers to convince them to buy things. First, they often put two things that are in the same category but have significant price different side by side so people get to compare the price the moment they saw them. I think this is related to the interpretation part of the perception process because it tricks people's brain to let us think one is a better deal or one is superior than the other one.
Also, many of the products have red or yellow price tags if they are on sale. This makes them stand out more because all the other tags are white. This is about the attention part of the perception process because the colors used on the tags are easier to get spotted than the others.
Besides the arrangement and price tags, there are also a lot of promotions in the store that are trying to get people's attention and convince them to buy things from the supermarket. For example, there are many big banners with huge and colorful font that are easy to spot, and dramatic numbers or adjectives that tell people how cheap their products are. this also has something to do with the attention part of the perception process, because larger texts or numbers tent to get more focus than smaller ones and it makes it more affective to spread the message.
Around the checkout area, there are some smaller products customers can grab when they were leaving such as candies, razors, or drinks. This is related to the interpretation step of the perception process because people interpret the small products as a reward of finishing their shop. The supermarket also limit the amount of eggs people can buy, but this might not be for making people spend more money but because we are short on eggs recently and they want to make sure everyone can get eggs. There are also some products that were sold in bundles so people can get more things in one purchase and it makes them feel like they are saving money. Things such as big and small bottles of milk or yogurt and candies were sold in bundles because they are often used together. This is also related to the interpretation part of the perception process, because people interpret the products as a group and it makes it feel more reasonable to make the purchase. Finally, there were theme songs of the supermarket being played in the background influencing people by repeating the same line like “sale” or “good deal”. I think this is related to the organization process because the music and the lyrics might go into people's head even though they might be paying attention to them, and it could cause them to think they can find good deals in the store.