Transcripts

Brian Wansink, PhD:
The longer we end up lingering in a grocery store the more we end up buying. If the frozen foods, like the desserts and things initially met us as we walked in, we'd buy these things, but then we'd feel rushed through the rest of the store to kind of get out, before the stuff melted or spoiled.

Brian Wansink, Professor of Marketing and Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University says you've likely heard the advice that you should make a shopping list before you go grocery shopping to avoid impulse purchases however…

If you end up taking a shopping list you're probably more likely to have more impulse purchases. For most people who take a shopping list, this ends up being a very premeditated event. You know they tend to block out time for it. And in the event they end up taking much more time as they shop and the more time they take as they shop the more unintended items they end up buying.

And the signs in stores really do influence our purchasing.

We did a study a while back where we had signs for soup. And they said, "Soup 79 cents a can, no limit per person." In other stores we had a sign that said, " Soup 79 cents a can, limit 12 per person." Now what ended up happening is people saw the signs that said no limit per person and they bought about 3 or 4 cans of soup. If it said 12 cans per person they ended up buying about 7 cans of soup.

Tomorrow, more ways stores influence our behavior. I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.