I have to hand it to them. Grocery stores are the masters of consumer psychology. How else can you explain walking into the grocery store for one item and coming out with a basket full of stuff?

In some ways they remind me of carnival pitchmen who’ve refined their sales pitches to perfection. In the process we spend more than we need to or would like to.

Let’s take a look at the subtle grocery store manipulation that drains hard earned money from our pocketbooks.

The Limited Quantities Trick

How many times have you ever heard a cashier say,

“No ma’am, you’re over limit on those mangos – there’s a limit of 3 per person you know.”

Do you really think that the store cares how many items each customer purchases? Of course not. Their only concern is making sure they sell as much as possible.

Here’s a simple fact – In the direct marketing world the two easiest ways to influence a person to make a purchase are (1) limit the time an offer is available or (2) limit the quantities of product available for purchase.

Don’t believe me. Just take a look at the Home Shopping Network or any typical late night infomercial to see what I mean.

It seems supermarkets have adapted these time tested marketing ideas for use on the grocery store floor.

Placing a limit sign on the side of a product automatically guarantees that more customers will buy. I mean if the quantities are limited it must be a great deal – right! Not only will more customers purchase but I’m quite sure each will make sure they get their limit.

So with a simple limit sign the grocery store has both increased the number of people interested in the sale and also guaranteed that those who do buy will buy more – probably the limit allowed by the sale.

Now don’t get me wrong. Sometimes these “limit sales” turn out to be great deals. I’ve run into a few great limit sales recently. I’m simply saying that you should always check out such a sale before reflexively placing items in your cart.

Check the regular price to see if you really are getting a deal. Sometimes you’re only saving pennies. Make sure to check the expiration date of the product or the condition of the items if they are perishables. A limit sale is a quick way for a supermarket to get rid of items past their prime.

Finally, if it is a legit sale be careful of going over the limit because the scanner may charge you full price for any extra items.

The Limited Time (4 Day Sale) Trick

This limited time sales trick is another adaptation from the direct marketing world. Typically supermarket sales run for a week. Sometimes, however, stores feature “special” 3 day or 4 day sales – the typical limited time offer trick. I believe they want to secretly give you the impression that the deals at these sales are especially good.

One night I was in the store to get some milk and noticed that a “special” 4 day sale was going on. I better make sure I check out all the deals as I won’t be back before the sale ends, I thought. Yes, I have to admit that there were a few great bargains – what I like to call “super sales” when you can get an item at 50% off or more.

But the truth be told, the normal week long sales also had many of these same super sales! Yet the difference is that because it was time limited – 4 days long only instead of the normal week long sale, I felt compelled to stay and shop.

The Sucker Sale

This is perhaps the most interesting of grocery store tricks I’ve come across. Supermarkets understand this simple fact. Everyone loves a sale. Don’t you? I have to admit my heart races just a little bit faster when I see the red sales sticker and the promise of a great deal.

Yet, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the process of putting a “sales” item in my basket only to notice how much I was really saving. Ten cents off a $3.29 box of cookies, twenty cents of a $2.99 carton of orange juice! Not quite a deal after all.

These “sucker sales”, as I like to call them, are particularly effective since they are interspersed amongst real bargains – items that are on sale for 30%, 40%, even 50% off their regular price. We’re so conditioned by the savings we get with the true sales that we blindly act as if all sales are deals.

Next time you’re about to throw a sale item in your cart take a second to figure out how much you’re really saving. You may be about to become the next victim of a “sucker sale”.

Do you have any grocery store tricks you’ve come across? We’d like to hear from you. Share your experiences with others by leaving a comment below.

It never fails. We go into the supermarket to buy a few things and come out with a cart loaded with groceries. The problem – those impulse grabs that fill our grocery carts.

In fact, depending on the study cited, nearly 40% to 50% of our grocery purchases are impulse buys – items we never intended on purchasing when we set foot in the store.

So how do we avoid these costly impulse purchases? Below I list nine simple tricks that you can use to keep more of your hard earned money.

Skip the grocery cart and go with the hand basket.

Have you noticed the growth in the size of grocery carts over the past decade? Supermarkets understand the larger the cart the more likely we are to fill it up. If your grocery trip is only for a few items simply walk right past the carts and take a small hand basket instead.

Skip the hand basket and use your arms.

Need only one or two items? Skip even the hand basket. With only two hands you’re only able to pick up what you can carry. This almost ensures that you’ll have to walk right past those impulse temptations.

Leave your credit card in car. Instead bring just enough cash.

So you only need a bag of sugar and some butter. Simply leave the credit cards in the car and instead bring in just enough cash to cover the cost of the butter and sugar. If you notice a REALLY good deal you can always run back to the car. This also gives you more time to think about whether or not you need to take advantage of that good deal anyway.

Park your grocery cart at the end of the aisle.

One of our readers submitted this tip. If you need to buy a week’s worth of groceries avoiding a grocery cart is out of the question. But you can still lower your chances of making impulse purchases. Simply park you cart at the end of each aisle. Walk down the aisle to pick up what you need and then head back to your grocery cart. Head to the next aisle and repeat. Again, with only two hands you force yourself to pick up only what you need and can carry, thus avoiding impulse buys.

Do a grocery cart check before you check out.

There’s nothing that says once you place an item in your cart you can’t remove it. Make a habit of finding a quiet corner in the grocery store where you can calmly examine your grocery cart. Does it contain items you really don’t need? Perhaps you have items that can be bought cheaper at the drug store or local Target. Do you really need 10 cans of pinto beans?

Don’t get fooled by a “sucker sale”.

Sales are one of the ways in which supermarkets trick us into making impulse purchases. I’m not talking about the great deep discount sales but what I call the “sucker sales”. These are sales in which the regular price of an item has hardly been reduced at all.

You notice that delicious bag of cookies on the shelf with the big bright red sales sticker above it. You instinctively grab a bag even though you know you don’t need cookies – but hey they’re on sale. If you’d look closer you would have noticed that you’re only saving ten cents on a $3 bag of cookies! – you’ve just become another victim of the “sucker sale”.

When you can’t find an item ask for directions.

Supermarkets don’t want you to become too comfortable with the store layout. This would allow you to enter the store, quickly find what you need, and walk out. Not the optimal situation for the supermarket because the more time you spend in the store the more money you spend.

This is why supermarkets periodically relocate items in their stores. In fact, store shelves actually contain retractable wheels on the bottom that make this task of relocating items all the easier.

The next time you notice that your store has moved an item you buy on a regular basis, don’t waste time wandering the store looking for it’s new location. Just ask the nearest clerk or checkout person where it is.

Place a snack in your car ahead of time.

Common advice is not to go to the grocery store hungry as you are inevitably much more susceptible to impulse purchases.

Sounds great in theory, but in practice many of us have such hurried and hectic schedules that we’re not even thinking about eating something before we arrive at the supermarket.

One way to make sure that you’re not hungry when shopping is to always have a snack available in your glove compartment – chips, energy bar, or gum for example. I get stock up on cheap snacks at my local dollar store.

Finally, watch out for those cheap $1 Redbox video rentals.

Those frugal $1 video rentals from the Redbox kiosks located outside the supermarket entrance are a great entertainment bargain. Be careful, however, because they may also lead to more impulse spending.

When you rent a video you naturally have to return it. It’s the return visit where you may be tempted to step inside the grocery store and again open yourself up to impulse shopping. In essence, the cheap videos serve as a way for the supermarket to get you back to the store within a short period of time – a recipe for increased grocery spending.

Do you have tips for stopping impulse buying? We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment below.

I’m always amazed at how food companies alter the packaging and appearance of their products to entice us to make a purchase.

A recent example of this occurred with my regular orange juice purchase. A few months ago while browsing my local grocery store I came across a special promotional case featuring a new variety of Tropicana orange juice called Trop50. Trop50 offers 50% less sugar and 50% fewer calories than regular Tropicana orange juice. It sounded like a healthier alternative.

Since the Trop50 was on sale, I placed a few cartons into my shopping cart. It was not until I reached the regular orange juice section that I noticed the Trop50 cartons are taller and slightly more narrow than the regular cartons of orange juice.

I didn’t think too much of  it because the taller Trop50 carton makes it appear that you’re getting the same amount of juice as you would have if you purchased the regular Tropicana orange juice.

No big deal until you take a closer look and see, as indicated on the side of the carton,  that the taller, slightly skinnier carton of Trop50 orange juice actually contains only 59 ounces of juice compared to the 64 ounces of juice found in the regular Tropicana orange juice cartons. Worse yet, the non-sale price of the Trop50 was 20 cents higher than the price of the regular Tropicana orange juice.

So let’s get this straight: for the Trop50 orange juice with 50% less calories and 50% less sugar,  you pay 20 cents more and get 5 ounces less juice than the regular Tropicana orange juice!

Yet it seems that I’m not the only one that’s picked up on this food packaging slight of hand. A recent Consumer Reports publication has commented on the new Trop50 orange juice as well. They too noted the fact that the Trop50 carton contains 5 less ounces than the regular varieties of  Tropicana orange juice (although in their case the Trop50 and regular orange juice were priced the same.)

Consumer Reports goes on to report something that I failed to notice at first. The Trop50 is listed as a “orange juice beverage” containing only 41% orange juice, while the regular Tropicana orange juice is made from 100% juice.

I believe Consumer Reports sums it up best when they say”

“Instead of spending extra for a lower-cal juice beverage, cut those calories by mixing regular orange juice with water or seltzer.”

Key Lesson: Be careful with product packaging. New sizes and shapes can be misleading. That’s why its more important than ever to read the product information carefully to see how much food you’re actually getting.

Have you had an interesting experience with product packaging, presentation, or labeling? Share your experience. Leave a comment below.

In today’s tough economy many consumers are now shopping with a grocery list to help save money. They realize a list focuses their shopping behavior like a laser, helping them avoid ever present, but costly, impulse purchases.

Yet supermarkets realize that shoppers are increasingly entering their stores with a singular purpose in mind – to grab the items on their list and get out quickly. In effect, consumers have developed “tunnel vision” – traveling up and down supermarket aisles looking only for those groceries that are on their mental or physical shopping lists.

In response, grocery stores have placed “speed bumps” in their aisles -  items that physically or psychologically interrupt a consumer’s tunnel vision and steer them toward impulse purchases. These “speed bumps” have become so prevalent that grocery store aisles frequently resemble obstacle courses making navigation with a large shopping cart difficult.

Let’s take a look at a few of these “speed bumps.”

Over-Sized Signs.

How does a product attract the attention of a shopper who’s flying by to their intended purchase? – With a sign located right on the store shelf of course!

The bigger the better.  The problem – in order to break our “tunnel vision” these signs have grown larger and larger. If you’re not careful it can be quite easy to actually side swap some of the larger grocery store shelf signs.

And if you thought that was bad enough, how about these mega-sized ceiling signs located below.

Floor Advertisements.

What’s the best way to grab your attention? Place an advertisements where you’d least expect it. The supermarket floor has become the perfect spot and floor ads are popping up in supermarkets faster than weeds in a backyard garden.

Just be careful though. While you’re distracted looking at the floor you could get side-swapped or rear-ended by another shopper. It’s happened to me!

As with the shelf signs, floor ads are meant to distract us from our true shopping targets and steer us toward impulse purchases.

Stand Alone Product Displays.

Stand alone displays are perhaps the most annoying attempts to break shopper “tunnel vision” and get customers to notice products they might have otherwise sped right past.   Its hard not to notice a display that juts right into your shopping path. Navigating large shopping carts with two or more people in the aisle becomes a little more challenging.

But perhaps more annoying, however, is how these displays lure you into thinking an item is on sale. Frequently the stand alone product display will have a large printed sign attached to it. Naturally, many assume this means the product is on sale when in fact it isn’t.

Take the display pictured below, for instance. One could easily assume that the Quaker Oats bars featured in the display are on sale. If you travel two aisles over, however, you’ll find the exact same bars located on the store shelf for the exact same price.

Warehouse Displays.

The next “speed bump” is what I term the warehouse display in which a grocery store stacks items still in their shipping boxes on the store floor. This is similar to how many items are displays in a warehouse store like Sam’s Club. Like the stand alone display these are hard to miss – which I surmise is the intended purpose. I’ve nearly accidentally rammed my grocery cart into more than a few of them.

I secretly wonder if the store is trying to achieve what I call  a “Costco effect”, trying to get you to equate the low warehouse store prices with the featured product. As with stand alone displays you have to be extra careful when you see a large printed price sign on the item and not naturally assume its on sale.

More and more shoppers understand how costly impulse buys can become. As a result, they frequently shop with a mental or physical shopping list.

Knowing this, grocery stores look to disrupt our tunnel vision for just a moment with “speed bumps.”  They intend to grab our attention for just a second. In this split second they tempt us to make that impulse purchase – to deviate from our mental or physical shopping list.

The best advice – stick to your guns and your shopping list. Ignore the large shelf signs and navigate right around those stand alone product displays. Your wallet will love you for it.

Update: This article was included in the recent Carnival of Personal Finance hosted by the ManvsDebt personal finance blog.