Supermarket expert shares little-known box trick that makes veg look 'fresher'
When we head into a supermarket to buy our weekly groceries, we are often on a bit of a mission and might not pay too much attention to the positioning of items on shelves and signs around the store.
But often these can be psychological tricks that encourage shoppers to buy items they didn't necessarily need.
This is according to consumer psychologist Dr Cathrine Jansson-Boyd from Anglia Ruskin University who has been sharing tips and tricks shops use with The Mirror.
As well as the obvious tricks, like end-of-aisle offers, the expert has also told how supermarkets use more subtle 'manipulations' on customers as soon as you walk in the door.
Dr. Cathrine Jansson-Boyd has been sharing supermarket tricks (Dr Cathrine Jansson-Boyd)
The boxes will often be close to the shop entrance (Getty Images)Take, for instance, the fruit and vegetable aisle and the boxes you find there - as the colours of the boxes weren't chosen at random.
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Dr Jansson-Boyd explains: "The higher-end supermarkets, like Waitrose and Sainsbury's and Marks & Spencer, they tend to want to project a perception as soon as you walk in the door that it's a good shop and everything is fresh, so they'll likely stick fruit and vegetables and maybe some flowers by the entrance.
"This is because, when we see fruit and vegetables we perceive them to be high quality and good for us, we don't associate them with low quality.
"The supermarkets then enhance this initial fresh perception with the boxes they store the fruit and vegetables in.
"They might have green boxes or light brown ones and these are used because they look earthy and so they reinforce the idea that everything is very natural and healthy."
Green and brown boxes create an 'earthy' feel, while the blue ones seem 'fresh' (Getty Images/iStockphoto)She adds: "Some shops will have their produce in blue boxes and this is meant to make it look very fresh, as that's a colour we might associate with freshness."
Alternatively, Dr Jansson-Boyd says that cheaper supermarkets, like Aldi and Lidl, may instead place baskets of sweets, biscuits or seasonal goods that are on offer by the doors to show the customer that they are there to cater for their needs in a "low-price manner".
This comes after the expert shared how supermarkets also use different baskets to get shoppers to buy more.
She explained how traditional handheld baskets often stopped shoppers from going overboard and buying too much, as the basket would become too heavy to carry and they'd have to give up and head to the tills, this is why more recently supermarkets now offer baskets on wheels.
However, what many people don't realise is that these wheelie baskets are actually much bigger than the old handheld ones.
"They can almost hold the same amount as a small trolley, but because it's a basket, you have the perception that you're buying less. So when you're trying to save money, using one of these baskets is not necessarily a good thing to do, because you do tend to fill them up," Dr Jannson-Boyd explains.
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Often these bigger baskets will be placed by the door for shoppers to grab on the way in, while the older handheld ones are at the end of the tills.
She added: "It looks like people have dropped the baskets by the tills while shopping, but often that's not the case, they put them there because it means it will be easy to grab the bigger basket on wheels as you come in than go all the way up to the tills to get the smaller one."
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