Buyology

My weekday morning routine involves watching The Today Show while I eat breakfast. As far back as I can remember, while getting ready for school at a young age, my parents always had The Today Show blaring from their bedroom. It holds a special place in my heart!

This morning, as I was eating my oatmeal (oats made w/ water, spoonful of SunButter, spoonful of homemade jelly, chia seeds) they did a short segment on grocery shopping and a book called Buyology, by Martin Lindstrom.

The Today Show segment started off with grocery stores and examined product placement, aesthetics, etc. Grocery stores place products in certain spots to try and woo you into buying more. Prime example: milk. Have you ever noticed that milk is in the back of the store? You have to walk through everything else to get to it! At the Whole Foods in Louisville, the milk is in the back, along with the eggs, and the bread is on the opposite side of the entrance, close to the check out, next to the baked goods section! They are geniuses.

Segway to Buyology: Lindstrom talks about how shopping carts have gotten bigger over the years. And the stores who haven't increased the size of their carts? They are "idiots," says Lindstrom. The bigger the cart, the more tempted you are to fill it up! Personally, I get a basket about 85% of the time because I don't really need a cart full of food.

Another detail that hit home was Lindstrom's point that people shop with credit cards. When you use a credit card to make a purchase, you feel like you don't really have a limit. $80 grocery bill? Ok. $120? Oh well. However, if you pay with CASH, that changes your mindframe a bit. If you have a nice Benjamin ($100) in your pocket and you give the entire thing to the grocer, that hurts. What does this mean? If you want to decrease spending at the grocery, get as much as you want to spend at an ATM and that's it! This is the point where I comment (as I have before) that I spend as I please on food. I can justify spending a pretty penny on food because it's going IN your body. Depending on the type of produce, I don't mind spending more to know that it hasn't been sprayed with crazy chemicals. However, that doesn't mean that the more expensive the food is, the better it is. I could go on...

The Today Show/Buyology segment was so short that I didn't get to hear much more about the book, but I'm definitely interested in checking it out!