The Old Coot turns in his wool coat.
By Merlin Lessler
It’s time for a new game plan! A new “Grocery Store” game
plan! They’ve been herding us through their aisles like sheep for decades. Milk
in one corner of the store, bread, as far away as they can get it. They try to entice
us with goods along the route when we come in for a quick bread & milk run,
the most common, dash-in-and-out, customer shopping errand. At least for
nuclear families with a couple of kids. The bread supply used to be critical;
you had to have it so your kid’s lunch could be packed for school. Nowadays, most
kids eat school cafeteria food; my generation abhorred it. Even so, people
still go on milk and bread runs.
We’ve all suffered with it. You rush into a big-chain
grocery store for milk & bread on your way home from work. Where’s the
bread? - As far from the milk as you can get! Some “brilliant” marketing genius
(I need to tread lightly here – I was a marketing guy at one time, but I was cured
of the affliction) came up with this bread-milk placement plan. It’s a
profit-based strategy, not a customer service strategy.
And, it works, to a degree. But for the most part, it
annoys us. It’s been going on so long we take it for granted and put on our
running shoes. Is it merchant bullying? It feels that way to me! Big-chain
grocery stores aren’t the only ones that do it; how about running into a
big-chain pharmacy to pick up a prescription? You have to go to the very back
of the store, past the chips, the cereal boxes, the ice-cream cooler, the
office supplies, the garden shop to get your prescription. Then we’re made to get
in line behind a mark on the floor to comply with privacy regulations. But,
we’re still within earshot and we make sure to listen when the customer talks
to the pharmacist.
It should be no surprise that grocery stores and
pharmacies employ the same tactics. They are basically the same entity, selling
both food and drugs. As they continue to add products, merchandising will go full
circle, back to the old general store. Except, there won’t be a warm glow from
a potbellied stove with a cluster of old coots like me sitting around it in
winter or out front in summer, perched on empty crates next to the fruit and
vegetable racks. Milk wasn’t in the back of the store in those days; it was placed
in the milk box on your front porch, waiting for you when you came down for
breakfast.
How do we stop this debacle? I don’t know; it’s so
ingrained in the store design philosophy it seems impossible to fix. I do the
best I can; I get bread first, pick up a few extra loaves and leave them over
by the milk cooler so someone who starts there can avoid a trip to the other
side of the store. The geniuses in the corporate office haven’t figured out
that the key to profitability is to focus on the customer, making the shopping
experience hassle free, not some strategy that tries to trick us into an
impulse buy. They think they can treat us like sheep? Will this ram ain’t
saying, “Baa, Baa,” any more.
Comments? Complaints? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com
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