Supermarkets… have to hate them
Today, we went to a Supermarket sorta near us. Usually we do our day-to-day grocery shopping in a smaller Supermarket that is within walking distance, but this other supermarket is far cheaper (even though they are owned by the same company – look here for their reasons) – so we go there every month or so and go for the big hauling.
Okay, we started out making a classic error… today is the friday after a national holiday (the christian Ascension Day), and I took the day of to get some shopping done for Freja’s birthday tomorrow (yay for her!). Turns out I wasn’t the only one… half of Denmark’s population decided to migrate to the center today… traffic was horrible, people were annoyed, tired and annoying. I’m a patient man… to a point – when the third person in a row decides that they are more busy than me and cuts in before me in line – I tend to get cranky.
Well, all those things aside – you’d think that the supermarket would do their utmost to please people and make shopping a breeze – guess again. We know beforehand about 90% of what we want (rest is seasonal vegetables and fruits) – including where these articles were the last time we went there. I like to make a mental map of the supermarket to optimize our route and avoid too many roundtrips. Along comes marketing guys – I hate them! I can see their reasoning, but that doesn’t make me agree with them.
You see, marketing people are not here to make your day pleasant – they are here to sell stuff. And they will do absolutely anything to do so. Including moving things around, so you have to spend time looking for it. Their rationale is that if you don’t know where something is, you’ll pass by a lot of items that you maybe never saw before – it’s an adventure! Well, screw adventuring when I’m shopping. I just want to get it over with as fast as possible. I see a few flaws in their brilliant plan:
1. If I’m annoyed, other people (especially men it seems) are furious and frothing at the mouth. On average, it takes us about 1 hour to complete our shopping, if we go straight for what we want and don’t have to make too many round-trips. 1 hour equals somewhere around 4 km at our pace. Now add about 1 km from the parking lot, a 30 minute drive, a tired child and a shopping cart that keeps turning left and you have what? You guessed it – tired parents. The third time we discover that they thought it would be an adventure to find pasta sauce – we are frothing. Today took about 3 hours of shopping which would normally take 1 and a half. And you guessed it – angry customers aren’t very spontaneous buyers…
2. There are two general types of customers – regular ones and people like us who go every once in a while. Type Regular would know where everything is in the Supermarket and would probably find where they moved the stuff pretty quickly. So, they would fail to find a whole lotta new – aside from what they put there instead of the original grocery. Type Once-in-a-while knows the general layout, but would fail to know where everything is exactly. So, they would still get to see a lot of the warehouse a few times over before heading out because they a) never bought spaghetti sauce here before or b) forgot where it was the last time.
Now, who would you as a supermarket rather have as customers – type Regular or type Once-in-a-while? I know, I’d go for type Regular. So, we want to convert Once-in-a-while to Regular – do we do that by annoying them? Probably not a sound strategy. I become a regular customer if the following three things are there:
- Quality is decent (not too many out-of-date items and a nice looking vegetable section) without ripping me off.
- Personel is friendly and helpsome.
- I’m not annoyed.
I simply hate being a guinea pig for these damn marketing people that want to try the latest trick in getting me to behave in a way they like. Come on, we’re talking groceries – I’m not all that excited by finding a new type of carrot – nor am I going to start eating Kellogg’s Rice Crispies because they are where frozen goods used to be. Stop treating me like a goddamn simpleton and let me finish my shopping fast and efficient-like!