IMPULSE BUYING

New Assault on the Consumer

TO U.S. merchandisers, the key to bigger sales is a new pseudo science that analyzes the U.S. housewife's whims with equal parts of salesmanship, psychology, hypnotism and common sense. Its name: impulse buying. The idea is not new, but with the rise of self-service supermarkets, super drug and variety stores, there is a greater incentive than ever before to encourage shoppers to throw away their shopping lists and buy more than they ever intended.

Despite all talk about price as the great determinant, low cost is the major factor for barely 16% of all shoppers; studies also show that another 16% shop only for heavily advertised brands. In between ranges the vast middle ground of shoppers, fair game for the motivational researchers, who take dead aim with all the analytical gimmicks under the supermarket sun. They claim, for instance, that the undecided mass of supermarket shoppers --they call them "emotionally insecure"--really do not know what they want when they enter a store and often are not sure what they have bought right up to the cash registers. In tests, researchers paid for housewives' purchases, led them to another market and asked them to shop again for the week's groceries. There the women bought an entirely different basket of goods. Such tests have persuaded stores to stay open at night to enmesh the undecided male as well as the female. A couple shopping together buys 60% more than the man alone, 30% more than the wife alone.

Most supermarket chains have merchandising committees to figure out ways to present and sell the best of the 150 new products flooding into the market each week. Once, grocers could depend on personal service to push a product; today, with the rise of the self-service market, the business has about 1,500,000 fewer clerks than it would otherwise need. What sells is what appeals to the shopper's impulse: the color, the size, the shape, even the shelf position of the package. Years ago, only comparatively few companies worried about their labels. Now all do.

Libby, McNeill & Libby was having trouble selling baked beans until it changed the label to a rich, dark color, emblematic of the molasses-smothered beans inside, has since redesigned nearly all its 250 labels. One manufacturer put out cotton-tipped swabs in three colors: white, pink and chartreuse. White and pink were fine; chartreuse flopped because it reminded women of baby's soiled diapers. In many cases the brighter--and sometimes the more incongruous--the package, the greater the appeal. California's Thoro-fed Dog Food watched sales jump 40% when it wrapped Fido's dinner in gleaming gold foil. Among the new gimmicks: multiple-unit "specials," with three, six and twelve items in a pack. One Midwest chain reports that it sold only nine cans of sauerkraut a week at a dime apiece, but 441 cans priced at ten cans for $1. A West Coast petfood packer sells more three-can packages priced at 29-c- than three individual cans priced at 9-c- apiece.

Packaging is only half the battle. The right spot on the right shelf in the right aisle is a matter of life and death, since stores can control the sale of almost any item by the position they give it. Vertically, the best location is arm-high for a medium-sized woman, 5 ft. 4 in. tall. Horizontally, everyone wants the last 6 ft. of the display island. Libby is even going the competition one better by color-coding its baby foods (yellow for meat, green for vegetables, coral for fruit) so that a housewife can load up in a hurry. The best special displays are big and impossible to avoid, i.e., pyramided in the center of the aisle, thus bringing traffic to a halt.

The scramble for top space leads to all sorts of methods to gain preferential treatment. Some companies resort to toasters, TV sets and other gifts (though rarely straight cash) to get the edge over competing brands. But most companies depend on their traveling sales representatives to wangle more space for their products. It is considered perfectly legitimate to help store managers "arrange" their shelves, even though the "arrangement" often winds up with a competitor's product buried out of sight and reach. Such sharp practices are gradually dying out because companies can work a much better deal with top management on a chainwide basis. Merchandisers argue for special space to tie in with national promotions or big ad campaigns, offer specially reduced prices in "coupon deals" or a flat reduction, e.g., $1 per case, for every additional case a store owner is willing to take on.

The success of the campaigns is amply demonstrated by the fact that grocery sales are still soaring. Last week the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. reported record sales and profits for the seventh year in a row. As one West Coast adman says, "Mrs. America doesn't just buy what she needs; she buys what she wants."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.