This is your brain on shopping.
There’s a reason the area immediately inside the entrance to the supermarket is stacked with promotional items and bargains. Those magazine racks are there for a purpose. And if you’ve ever wondered why the fruit and vegetable section is up front when these items are easily damaged and should be the last things you get before going to the checkout, it’s not because the store managers are dingbats. Same reason the everyday necessities are located near the back of the store.
The sellers have studied us, they know how we shop, and now they’re using MRIs and cellphone position tracking to know more. Consider that as you do your last-minute holiday shopping. (In our experience there’s a lot less human traffic at the mall on Xmas eve, so maybe last-last-minute shopping is a good idea.)
The way the brain buys, in The Economist.
Shoppers already know that everyday items, like milk, are invariably placed towards the back of a store to provide more opportunity to tempt customers. This is why pharmacies are generally at the rear, even in “convenience†stores. But supermarkets know shoppers know this, so they use other tricks, like placing popular items halfway along a section so that people have to walk all along the aisle looking for them. The idea is to boost “dwell timeâ€: the length of time people spend in a store.
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