Money Saving Grocery Shopping Secrets... What You Don't Know Will Cost You Thousands!

Every time you step into your local grocery store you have been duped into spending more than you need to by a well planned grocery marketing strategy. Supermarket marketing is a huge and well organized business.

Why? Very simply put, the margins in grocery stores are low, often between 1-2%. If they can't get you to buy then they aren't making a profit. So, any supermarket's grocery marketing strategies are an integral part of maintaining a solid profit margin.

The following discussions will seek to educate you on the common grocery marketing strategies used to strongly encourage you to spend more each time you shop. By becoming better acquainted with the reasons why products are displayed as they are, you will be better able to make wiser purchasing decisions and save yourself some cold, hard cash.

All grocery marketing strategies have one goal and one goal only to get you to buy more than you planned to every time you shop. Go without a grocery list and I will guarantee that you will spend considerably more than you planned to.

Grocers know that those of us who go unprepared will spend more time perusing the shelves than those of us who shop with a master grocery list. Studies show that the longer you are in the store the more you will spend on each shopping trip.

Why is shopping with a list the most important thing you can do? It helps you to prevent impulse purchases, and impulse purchases will escalate your grocery expenses faster than any other thing you can do.

Consider this example; if you normally spend $150.00 per week at the supermarket how many impulse purchases do you need to make to overspend your budget by 10%?

Got the answer? It really does depend on the cost of the items purchased not the number of items, but $15.00 is not hard to spend anymore.

Case in point, my daughter wanted to have a cookout with her friends a week ago and asked me to pick up some hot dogs on my way home.

I said fine, hot dogs for 6 kids won't be that much. I categorically refuse to buy junk, and usually by the fat-free hot dogs for my kids. Hot dogs are not the most nutritious thing in the world anyway right? Imagine my surprise when the shelf price was $4.69 per package. When did hot dogs get to be so expensive?

I live in the Southwest, and groceries are more expensive here than in other parts of the country, but the sticker price was a surprise even to me. I spend lots of time in grocery stores because I make my living as a grocery shopping consultant and personal shopper, but I did not expect what I saw of that shelf tag.

Suddenly 2 packages of hot dogs and 2 packages of hot dog buns later and my grocery bill came to $11.36 for just one "I need it now" purchase that I had not planned on making. You can see how quickly things can get out of hand if you are not paying attention.

What is the moral of this really sad story? Plan ahead, go with a master grocery shopping list and stick to it. Don't let a tempting display of products escalate your food bills for no reason. It can and does happen to anyone.

The supermarkets have well researched grocery marketing strategies in place to get you to overspend. Be aware, go with a master grocery shopping list and you will reduce spending. Go without a shopping list, and anyone can fall victim to their strategies.

Grocery store layouts are designed to ensure that you must walk to the back of the store.

Why is this important? Just as before, the longer you are in the store and the further you have to go to buy what you are there for the more likely you will be to pick up an extra item here and there.

Impulse purchases keep the grocery chains profitable and make you spend more than you had planned, escalating your food costs.

Take the typical grocery store floor plan and design. There is no denying that the grocery store you shop in was designed with a grocery store layout to maximize profits.

What items do you buy the most? Produce, meat, eggs, milk, bread, beer or wine...staples that we use all the time.

It is not an accident that when you enter the store you are faced with walking past giant displays of this weeks specials on the end caps of every aisle you pass.

Bear in mind that the specials of the week are not always loss-leaders for the store. Often, they are products at full shelf price and full profit margins with a sale sign to make you think that the price is right. Sometimes the "sale price" is even higher than the regular everday shelf price, so buyer beware.

Grocery store layouts maximize profits, no doubt about it.

What can we do as an educated consumer? Have a plan, and stick to it. I am not saying that if the price really is a good deal, you should walk by a product without buying an unplanned item. Every once in awhile you will find a good deal by accident.

If the product is something you really could use at a really low price then take advantage. Good deals with stellar savings can be found anywher at anytime. Just know a good deal when you see one and don't be fooled for a full price item masquerading as a bargain.

The point is to be aware that your local supermaret is trying to make you spend. The grocery store layout is designed to maximize profits for the store.

Another commonly used grocery marketing strategy is to get you to walk slowly, very slowly through the aisles. Again, the longer you shop the more you will spend without fail.

How do the supermarkets get you to do this? They play soft, soothing music. Elevator music calms the masses, and gets both you and the shoppers around you to move at a leisurely pace. After all, how fast can you go when the person ahead of you is in no hurry to finish their grocery shopping trip?

Soothing music aside, grocery marketing strategies get even sneakier. Marketers have been known to place carpets and floor mats strategically to get you to slow you pace. While this technique is not nearly as common due to the hazards of people tripping and the liability of a personal injury, I still see it from time to time in my travels.

A more common grocery marketing strategy that you will see all the time giant floor stacks of "sale" items placed just opposite of each other. The floor stacks are usually used for a multitude of reasons.

First, two floor stack displays placed opposite of each other will slow the flow of traffic up and down the grocery aisles. You will need to wait to go single file through the narrowed aisle. While you wait you are naturally forced to look for something else to occupy yourself with in order to now become annoyed with the people around you. Shopping anyone? After all, we did come to the grocery store with the intent of shopping didn't we?

Floor stack displays are also commonly used to feature items at higher than average profit margins. As discussed before, the product may or may not be a true sale price so it pays to consider your purchases closely.

Grocery marketing strategies can get trickier still. A little known technique for getting you to buy the item on the stack at the higher profit margin is to use the display itself to block your view of the competing product that is actually the better bargain. Don't fall for this strategy. Comparison shop with all competing items before making you decision.

Using some discretion if you see any of the grocery marketing strategies listed above will save you from making some poor buying choices.

Get in, buy what you need and get out. The longer you are in the store, the more you will spend.

Do you know why the first grocery shopping tip everyone will give you is to not shop while hungry? Impulse purchases abound when everything you see looks appealing.

Grocery stores adapted a marketing strategy that Cinnebon uses in shopping malls across the country. It is not a mistake that fresh French bread is baked at 4 PM everyday. The smell of baking bread brings back the nostalgia of Granny's kitchen around the holidays and makes us positively crave comfort food.

If you are hungry you spend more right? If you are hungry now you hit the prepared stuff in the deli and bakery and skip cooking tonight. Convenience costs folks and the supermarkets know it.

It doesn't happen to hurt that the margins on in store bakeries and deli products are among the highest in the store does it?

You are hungry and ready to buy. The food smells delicious and is ready now. You don't need to cook, and all you need to do is whip out your cash. Seems like a good deal doesn't it?

Yep, I've done it too. We are all busy. Leisure time is all too short. We work hard and get tired. It also doesn't hurt the store's bottom line that 4PM just happens to be the prime time when people are stopping by on their way home from work and the store is more crowded than usual.

As a side note, a grocery store chain in my local area passes around samples of their $5.00 deli sandwiches around lunch time. They literally walk through the store with giant platters of goodies and then direct people over to the in store deli section. I'll admit, they are pretty tasty but a bit pricey. I watched in awe one day as the lines formed at the deli counter. They must have sold over 50 sandwiches in a half an hour at nearly $5.00 each. That's a marketing strategy that seems to be paying off.

We all get used to where the products we buy the most frequently are placed on the grocery store shelves. Grocery marketers are aware of this fact, and are savvy at keeping us off balance while shopping.

They change the placements of products on the store shelves both by design and frequently for a number of reasons.

First, and foremost to their bottom line, grocery manufacturers pay top dollar for premium shelf space. Sections are reset several times a year to reflect the changes made due to the slotting allowances that food manufacturers pay on an ongoing basis.

You may be wondering what constitutes premium placement. Anything at eye level, away from the start or end of each aisle and with multiple facings of product is considered prime territory.

Our eyes naturally see all of what is at eye level as we shop, and we tend to miss items placed high, low or within the first 3 feet at the beginning or end of each shopping aisle. Just like real estate location, location, location is everything when trying to increase sales volume.

What does this mean to us as consumers? The best deals may not be at eye level. Shop the entire section and make your spending decisions accordingly.

Another reason for the frequent changes is that they allow for new products, which can offer higher profit margins during their introductory period, to be placed on store shelves.

As discontinued merchandise is removed, new items are introduced. Resetting the grocery store shelves several times a year makes the changes less noticeable to consumers.

A side benefit to resetting shelves twice a year or more? If you can't find what you are looking for, you spend longer in the store. As we have seen, a longer shopping trip makes grocery marketers smile.

The grocery marketing strategies we are confronted with every time we shop are only a very small portion of the ways that we can and overspend our food budgets.

I will be developing a large number of lenses and also putting tons of free information on how to reduce your food expenses on my new blog Use Supermarket Coupons in the coming months.

I had a good friend of mine encourage me to actually publish a book on this topic, but I really felt that so many people could be helped that making the information free would be a better choice.

I have my hands full with my own business and will be working on these pages as time permits. But if you appreciate what you have learned here, and have found the information helpful, I encourage you to visit the Use Supermarket Coupons blog frequently and subscribe to our feed.

We will be covering so much more there than just coupon strategies for savings, and there are so many ways to save.