1. Reading
How do you decide what
you are going to buy in a supermarket? Do you look in your refrigerator and kitchen cupboards and make a list of the things you need? Do you think about what you want to cook and then buy the food you need for each meal? Even if you do these things, marketing specialists at the supermarket make some of your buying decisions for you.

2. Specialists in marketing have studied how to make people buy more food in a supermarket. They work for supermarkets and do all kinds of things that you do not even notice. For example, the simple, ordinary food that everybody must buy, like bread, milk, flour, and oil, is spread all over the store. Bread might be in aisle 2 and milk in aisle 10. You have to walk by all the more interesting and more expensive items to find what you need.

3. The more expensive food is in packages with bright colors and pictures
The more expensive food is in packages with bright colors and pictures. This food is placed at eye level so you see it right away and want to buy it. The things you have to buy are usually located on a higher or lower shelf. However, candy and other things that children like are on lower shelves so that children can see them easily and ask their parents to buy them.

4. This method of marketing really works
This method of marketing really works. One study showed that when a supermarket moved four products from a low shelf to a shelf at eye level, it sold 78 percent more of those products.

5. Another study showed that for
every minute a person spends in
a supermarket after the first half
hour, she or he will spend $1.00.
If someone stays for 40 minutes, the supermarket makes an additional $ A store usually has a comfortable temperature in the summer and winter, and it plays soft music. It is a pleasant place for people to stay and spend more money.

6. Supermarkets also sell some things at lower, or special, prices every week. The prices on some of these “specials” are not really lower than their regular prices. For example, an item that is usually $.50 might be a special at 2/$1.00 (that’s two for one dollar). Or if something is not selling very fast at $.69, it is put on special at 2/$ People think the product is cheaper than usual and buy it.

7. Some stores have red or pink lights over the meat so the meat looks redder and fresher. They put light green paper around lettuce and put apples in red plastic bags.
So be careful in the supermarket. You may go home with a bag of food you were not planning to buy. Marketing specialists, not you, decided you should buy it.