When the customers make it pass the second sliding doors and into the actual store, almost all grab the A&P’s weekly store sales paper located on a stand right next to the door. The paper highlights the current specials and even offers a few coupons on top of the current sale. The prices of the items on sale are in large font, bolded and in stars – a way to catch the customer’s attention. One customer grabs the sales paper, steps aside and looks at the paper, flipping through the pages. Another customer walks in with the paper already in hand. Even as they are pushing their shopping carts through the aisles, customers continue to browse through the paper. They search the aisles for the same items that are being advertised in the weekly paper.
When it comes to shopping, the price of an item is a major determinant on whether the customer chooses to buy or not to buy the item. Coupons, too, steer customers to purchase certain items. Seeing a coupon dispenser by the milk products, a lady takes a coupon, looks at it and then picks up an almond milk carton from the refrigerator. People like to save money, so if something is at a discounted price, customers tend to buy the sale priced item – they even tend to buy multiples of it. On display are boxes of pasta with a big sign overhead reading “10 for $10.” Seeing this sign, a customer stops and grabs multiple boxes of pasta and throws them in her shopping cart. Another customer, pushing a shopping cart with about a dozen two-liter soda bottles in it, also stops and grabs a couple of the pastas that are displayed. A lady and a little boy stop to look at the bags of chips, but they don’t end up taking any. The lady says, “they’re not on sale,” and the two walk away, the little boy looking upset.
A number of people in the supermarket, however, tend to place their focus and decisions more towards the nutritional aspect of the item. A boy brings a bottle of juice to a lady, and before putting it in the shopping cart, the lady looks at the bottle. She places the bottle on a nearby shelf and says, “too much sugar.” A man and lady shopping together both have an item in hand, also staring at the label. They both put the item back on the shelf and continue walking through the aisle. Another customer seemed as if she were only shopping for healthy items; she grabbed a bag of apples, stopped to grab some bananas and then stopped again for a handful of asparagus. When picking a container of strawberries, the customer held up the container and turned it to look at the strawberries. She did this several times before finally putting a carton in her cart. Another customer carried out the same actions when sorting through the bags of grapes; she picked up several bags before placing one in her cart. When it came to buying fruits and vegetables, customers did something that they didn’t do when buying boxed items – they checked the produce for freshness.
When the customers complete their shopping, they head towards the cash registers and wait in line to check out. When being rung up by the cashier, some customers talk on the phone or with whoever they’re with, some bag their own groceries and others watch the screen where the prices are being displayed. When checking out, the cashier scans the items, places them on the conveyer belt and then bags the items. However, a cashier scans a jar of jelly and says something to the customer. The customer shakes her head and the cashier scans the jelly again. She doesn’t put the jelly on the conveyer belt to be bagged, but instead puts it underneath the register. At the self-scan registers, a customer scans a bottle of juice, but doesn’t bag it as she did her other items. She walks over to the lady monitoring the self-scan registers, returns a minute later empty handed and continues scanning her groceries. When all items were scanned and bagged, customers would hand over coupons to the cashier. And when it came time to pay some customers used cash and some swiped their credit cards. After placing their bags back into their shopping carts, customers left and loaded up their car trunks with grocery bags.
In the meat department, a man is looking through the meats and picks them up, one by one, observing the contents of the packages. However, he walks away without choosing any of the packages. Could it be that they were too expensive or what if they didn’t seem fresh? A little girl, sitting in the shopping cart, is crying for a box of cookies that she can’t reach and her mother moves the cart further from the cookies. Did she push the daughter further away and not give her the cookies because they were too expensive or because she believes they aren’t healthy for her daughter? A man picks up a cake from the bakery department, walks half way down the aisle and then sets the cake on a shelf with the breads. Why did he ditch the cake – did he realize it wasn’t healthy or did he think it wasn’t worth the price? Or is there something else? What if the man decided he wanted to buy fish and not meat? What if the mother was punishing her daughter for misbehaving earlier? What if the man decided to bake a cake instead of buying one? What if the lady buying multiple boxes of the sale priced pasta is buying them because she loves pasta or maybe she’s buying them for a food drive? What if the lady who didn’t object to buying her daughter’s favorite donuts wasn’t because they were on sale, but because they’re her favorite donuts too? It may seem as though the nutrition labels and the sale prices motivate people’s shopping habits, but what if health and money have nothing to do with the reason why people buy what they buy?