Supermarket Overkill
When we today enter a supermarket, we are bombarded with choices: dozens of brands of what essentially is the same product beg for our attention and try to convince us that they are superior to the other. Are they really? And does this much choice help us?
From Ancient Times To Today
Even in ancient Egypt and Rome, advertising was known. Through wall or rock paintings, merchants advertised their goods, politicians running campaigns told voters why they are better than that other guy and gladiators heralded their superior cunning and strength (and sold what today would be coined “action figures”).
But it wasn’t until the late 19th century that advertisement became what it is today, when industrialization made mass production viable. Because that made it possible to produce goods cheaply, which led the dilemma that then many similar products appeared, each needing something beyond its given properties to differentiate itself and stand out from competing offers.
Over the last 100 years this has taken up a dimension that nearly is incomprehensible.
Confusing Our Choice
In 1930 a person was happy to buy a bottle of water. Today, in the US alone, there are 184 different brands available of what essentially is still nothing but water. In some cases it is even nothing but tap water – of Coca-Cola’s Dasani we are told it has “added minerals”, for a “fresh, pure taste”, but in reality it’s the same water you can enjoy at home by opening the faucet. Except for the premium price.
Floating through choices
For cereals, a US shopper has about 380 brands to choose from and it is hard to imagine in how many distinctively different ways you can treat rice, corn and wheat to make 380 kinds of cereal that each offer a fundamental difference to the others.
It Is No Choice
They often don’t. Not the cereals, neither the water, nor any other product. We are mostly buying certain brands because we are coaxed into believing that brand A is the best or at least better than brand B, while in reality hardly any of these supposed superior qualities have ever been proven. Chances are that the generic brand product standing at the bottom of the rack was made by the same company manufacturing the name brand product.
In his book The Power of Persuasion – How We Are Bought and Sold, Robert Levine, professor of psychology at the California State University, exemplifies this with the help of toothpastes:
With all the toothpastes on the market, companies need to somehow make theirs appear different. Once upon a time, Crest set itself apart by advertising that it—implying it alone—had stannis fluoride and was recommended by the American Dental Association. Now shelves are filled with competitors who fight cavities with fluoride. Since each has pretty much the same cavity-fighting formula, advertisers are challenged to find some other “differentiator” that will establish a “position” for their product. In other words, how do they create a visible contrast between their product and the competition?
He continues:
Every toothpaste, I learned, touts its differential by highlighting one or two ingredients or a specific benefit that is its alone. Arm & Hammer tells you it’s the baking soda + peroxide toothpaste. Listerine toothpaste kills germs that cause bad breath. Tom’s of Maine is the natural toothpaste (with calcium to boot). Rembrandt is the whitening toothpaste. Metadent has fluoride, baking soda, and peroxide and—lest you confuse it with Arm & Hammer—adds that it has “the ingredients dentists recommend most for the care of teeth and gums.” One brand just calls itself by its differential: Plus + White Toothpaste. My own favorite is a Colgate toothpaste that contains “micro-cleansing crystals.” Take that, Mr. Tooth Decay. Crest, meanwhile, hasn’t stood still. It now promotes a series of toothpastes, each with its own special formula. The entire Crest line is contrasted not only with competitive brands but against itself. One Crest toothpaste features sensitivity protection, another has tartar protection, a third offers cavity protection, a fourth has gum care protection. Would it really be so difficult, one wonders, to mix all those protections together in one tube?
How does any of this help us come to a sensible decision, especially where food is concerned? It only takes up our time by having to make mostly unnecessary judgments, scanning dozens of colorfully screaming boxes, cans and packaging for a bit of information that just might bring some sense into this barrage of meaningless information.
To put insult next to injury, at the checkout we then even pay twice for our own confusion: The costs for expensive packaging and advertisement campaigns are directly calculated into the price tag ending up on the product, while the quality of ingredients often are reduced, to keep that price manageable.
As a closing point to this article, have a look at this picture:
At what point did you notice the two lonely humans in this flood of “choice”?
Pictures courtesy of Éole Wind and Lyza Danger.
10 Comments
I take a very simple approach toward food: I look and the ingredient list and nutrition values. And guess what? That’s ALL I look at. Apart from that, the tie-breaker is price.
Oh and guys, don’t discard “white brands” immediately (white brands are the brands of the store itself). Most often, those brands’ products are made by one of the real brands, at a loss, to ensure better placement of their own products.
The main idea is: if you’re willing to pay 5 euros for a box of breakfast cereal, the supermarket wants you to pay 5 euros. But if you’re only willing to pay 3 euros, then it’s better to sell you a box of cereals at 3 euros than not selling it at all. But if you put two boxes of cereals, exactly the same, except that one costs 3 euros and one costs 5 euros, you’ll pick the one costing 3 euros even if you were willing to pay more.
Enter the “bland brand”. By purposefully making the package, name, etc unattractive, you immediately put pressure on buyers to buy the shiny colorful box of cereals for 5 euros. Only if you are really on a tight budget will you even take a look at the cheaper box and find out that the ingredients and nutrition values are very close — so close, that they probably are the same thing (measured at different times, so statistical error explains the slightly different values).
That’s why bland brands are always:
– Cheaper
– Boxed and packaged unattractively
– Placed at the very bottom shelf and/or at the farthest away places
On the other hand, products placed at premium spots (near the cashiers for example) are always:
– Pricey
– Boxed and packaged attractively, using strong colors and contrast
– Impulse items like sweets, sodas, magazines, etc
– Definitely NOT whatever’s on your shopping list (toothpaste, meat, pasta, vegetables, etc)
There are actually some simple tricks to thwart the supermarket’s own tricks:
– Most important: make a shopping list at home, and buy at most one or two items that are not on the list
– Walk around for 5 minutes without putting anything on the basket, just browsing and comparing prices
– NEVER go into the supermarket hungry or thirsty
– NEVER go into the supermarket in a hurry (this is not always possible)
When I read about selling strategies in supermarkets, I learned that they often make the first aisle you encounter after entering narrow, to take speed out of your movements and have you stay longer. Also that the more expensive products are not only on eye level, but also toward the right of the shelve, as apparently people start scanning the products fast and from the left and slow down the further to the right they get.
Ooh, there was a Tedtalk uploaded like 3-4 months ago about choices.. I’ll pm it when I find it. remind me!
Moon, you are herewith reminded! 😉
Simple solution: Avoid packaged foods and learn to cook (might seem hard but anyone can do it). Cheaper, tastier and healthier.
It’s ridiculous how people say they like for instance Coca-Cola but can’t stand Pepsi. You’re basically paying for the label, and without it you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which.
I remember years and years ago I saw a documentary where they had the bosses of Coca-Cola and Pepsi take sips from glasses of Cola and try to identify theirs. They couldn’t! 🙂
Saw the picture twice before I read about the humans, looked at it again, then I started scanning down to up and saw them.
A documentary I saw where a 4 year old girl was asked which brand of macaroni & cheese was best, said it was Spongebobs, even though she’d never tasted it, and in an interview earlier that day said the mac&cheese she ate then was the best kind ever. She started crying when the mom didn’t buy the spongebob kind.
Advertising isn’t to inform us, and good education would get in the way of advertisement working the way it should. Namely critical thinking, and knowledge of scientific basics.
Yep, my sentiments exactly.
Another good blog post by Evil. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t the typical picture of a beautiful girl off to the right though… 🙂
Titans, you caught me cold! 🙂