British Aisles

I go shopping every day.

That is, I frequent one or more of the big four UK Supermarkets of Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons mainly for a small purchase for my lunch as for £3 or less I can get a good healthy meal deal or not, depending upon how I feel or just to grab a few things for the office kitchenette or to replenish the home cupboards.

I have no real brand loyalty.

My work often involves me driving between 100 and 200 miles daily and it is just that a familiar retail logo and easy parking draws me to these Temples of Consumerism in whatever location I find myself around noon. It can be a disorientating affair in that once inside the large food halls I could be in any of the four because they are all set out in the same broad layout and order.

It is obvious that the designers of modern stores regard us shoppers as nothing more than laboratory rats with trolleys guided through a maze of aisles by the promise of rewards for being relieved of our own hard earned cash.

In Britain the total daily spend on food is £160 million and the four main protagonists scrap mercilessly amongst themselves for a lions share of this budget.

A leading global consumer analyst has stated that the principal challenge for supermarkets to be successful and profitable is to break the habits of their shopper customers. I fit the pattern of a very ritualised visitor to a shop in that I just get into the up and down aisle mentality and invariably pick and choose the same items so that the end bill can be estimated very close to the nearest penny every time.

In doing so I do not fit the profile of a customer that the Supermarkets like to encourage and am likely to thwart the multi-million pounds of investment that they put into brain scans, eyeball scans, live bird's eye footage and the use of crowd modelling software in order to nudge us into spending more than we had intended.

The setting out of supermarket aisles and their stocking with goods and products is in itself a specialism and as we trudge up and down, Zombie-like, we are unwittingly exposing ourselves to "impulse areas", "golden zones", "checkout arrays", "walk through queues", "environmental envelopes", "gondola ends", "power aisle", "signpost brands", "buy levels" and "traffic builders" amongst many other tricks of the trade.

The Golden Zones are found towards the end of the shopping experience and comprise displays and shelves of chocolate bars and other goodies. What better way to reward ourselves for completing the mundane task of the shopping by purchasing a special, personal treat. Analysts liken our being plied with candy to a rat being given cheese for getting to the end of an experiment.

Gondola Ends, also known as end-caps are exposed, short blocks of shelves at the end of aisles where special offers are found. Some unscrupulous retailers have played on our expectations of bargains in the end-caps by stocking them with full price goods with signage made to look like there is a give-away promotion.

The friendly and socially responsible sounding "Environmental Envelope" is nothing more than a shop within a shop. It is dressed with visual cues to suggest discounts, special offers or bargains suggesting to shoppers that some deal activity is going on.

It is a fact that two-thirds of us do not shop with a list because regular frequenting of a particular store has produced a mental map of the layout. Aisle markers are largely ignored but research has shown a distinct habit. This is that we only start to concentrate as we reach the middle of the aisles where we know to expect the most recognisable or "Signpost Brands" to be found. The Heinz logo tells us we are in tinned goods, Coca-Cola for the soft drinks and Guinness for the stout section.

Power Aisles or action alleys are used for one-off promotions where TV's or DVD players can be piled up informally in their display boxes. Often the items are unrecognised brands and cheap but shoppers are given the impression that there are indeed good deals to be had resulting in that extra spend which was not originally intended.

Leading brands are known to pay supermarket chains listing or placement fees to position their products at eye level, or roughly 1.6m above floor level. However, in studies involving eye tracking cameras it was noticed that shoppers naturally look lower than eye level to between waist and chest height. When global company Procter and Gamble realised this they requested lower and cheaper fee shelf positions. Their sales increased dramatically but supermarkets soon caught on and revised their listing fees structure accordingly.

Essential goods such as milk and bread can be placed right at the back of the supermarket. This forces shoppers to walk further but with Supermarkets hoping that on the way to get such provisions we walk past more potential purchases. However, studies showed that a long walk for a pint of milk and a loaf of bread only caused aggravation and annoyance amongst customers whereas placing quick buy essentials closer to the entrance made shoppers more likely to return to the store for such purchases.

Shopping. I used to enjoy it as a pleasurable chore...............