How to arrange a grocery store can’t be an easy decision for owners or companies. Do you place similar items together for convenience? Do you place unalike items that are frequently purchased together next to each other? Some things never change, like the milk and dairy being at the back of the store, but the arrangement of the inner section of the store is subject to flux. Why do grocery stores rearrange so often? Why do they rearrange the store seemingly at random?
People are often in a hurry at the grocery store. Once they learn the layout of their favorite store, they can breeze through the aisles, knowing exactly where they can find the items on their list. Shopping can be systematic and you can do it on auto-pilot. When the products are suddenly rearranged, it can be irritating and take up valuable time when you want to get your shopping done and get home.
Grocery stores do have reasons for such rearrangements, however.
Moving Large Sections Such as Whole Aisles is Called a ‘Reset’
This is not necessarily a good thing for the grocery store’s profits. Sure, customer convenience and satisfaction are important to keep you coming back. But no matter how loyal your customers are, the average profit margins of a grocery store are very, very low, at around 2%.
Making it more difficult for you to find what you need is an advantage, despite the fact that you may be irritated when the store is suddenly completely rearranged. If it is harder for you to find what you need, you will likely end up buying more!
In grocery store lingo, this type of large-scale rearranging of an aisle, section, or entire store is called a ‘reset.’
Such a reset is a vast amount of work that will often require employees to work through the night. It may even require some overtime. So, as irritating and random-seeming as such a reset may be, it is not something that is undertaken lightly.
The idea is to disrupt the agenda; to interrupt the flow; to turn off that auto-pilot. The canned goods like soup were always in aisle three. Now, you find cereal there? Where are the Campbells? You have to walk around the store looking.
As you walk around searching, you are likely to engage in some impulse buying and pick up items you may not have purchased if the store had not been rearranged. You might even buy a box of cereal in aisle three, where the soup used to be, even though it’s not on your list.
Leaving all the items in the same place, forever and ever, means that customers will often buy the same things with little deviation. Rearranging the store and confusing the customer means that they will wander around the store more and notice more. Certain items might catch their eye, causing them to purchase more than they originally intended.
Best-Selling Products Moved to the Front
This is not to say that stores just rearrange at random. That would be silly. Certain best-selling items might be moved closer to the front, for instance. Or, they might place higher-profit items in more prominent locations. And, of course, when new products come out, some rearranging is required to accommodate them.
Special Displays of Overstocked or About to Expire Items
You may also notice prominent displays of certain items in addition to those items being located in their regular shelved location. These could be overstocked items or items like potato chips that are about to expire. Getting such items in people’s faces and selling them at a discount is better than not selling them at all.
Psychological Reasons For Changing Location Of Products
Other items might be placed in certain places for psychological reasons. For example, you might expect to find lard (if your store sells it at all) right next to vegetable shortening and other related items, but lard might engender certain negative feelings of disgust that can ‘contaminate’ feelings about the items they are placed near. So, lard may find itself banished to some far-flung region where you find the tumbleweeds and gefilte fish.
I’ve noticed that Whole Foods likes to place lots of flowers up front and that other retailers are mimicking this. Usually, the flowers are close to the produce. According to the GroceryStoreGuy, this is done so that the freshness of the flowers gives the impression that everything is fresh and in season although, of course, not everything is.
The perimeter sections are around the edges of the store for obvious reasons. You can’t place a baker or a deli in the middle of the store. However, if your store has its bakery section close to the front of the store, this is probably not random. The store wants you to smell those enticing and comforting bakery smells as soon as you enter.
Other items, like candy, gum, cold soda, etc. will always be upfront in the ‘grab and go’ section where it is also subject to impulse buying, just like the tabloid magazines.
h/t GroceryStoreGuy
