Psychological trick of the trade: This trick should allow supermarket customers to spend more money
Created: 12/21/2021, 12:22 PM
From: Ines Baur
Muscle play - the handle of the shopping cart should influence shopping behavior.
© Ralph Peters / Imago
Consumers are familiar with psychological tricks when shopping.
For example junk shelves at the cash register or expensive goods at eye level.
What hardly anyone knows: The positioning of the handles on the shopping trolley tempts you to shop.
Munich - The common shopping trolley in the retail trade has a single handle bar.
It runs horizontally - means straight from one side to the other.
For the retail trade, however, a trolley with two handles, one on the left and one on the right, would be more useful.
Similar to a wheelbarrow or suitcase trolley at a train station or airport.
According to a recent study by Innsbruck-based marketing expert Mathias Streicher together with Zachary Estes from the British Bayes Business School, this has less to do with the fact that consumers should be comfortable when shopping.
The way in which the handles on the shopping trolley are more likely to tempt consumers to buy more.
Shopping tricks: triceps or biceps - that is the question here
When a consumer pushes the standard shopping trolley with a horizontal handlebar through a supermarket, the triceps muscle in the upper arm is primarily activated by pushing it.
"Psychological research has shown that activating the triceps is a typical avoidance position and is therefore more likely to be associated with rejection or avoidance," explains Streicher in an article by psychologist Christian Hilscher on
Psylex.de
.
“For example, when people hold something undesirable at a distance with outstretched arms.
From the consumer's point of view, one could say that standard shopping carts should at least not make the consumer more willing to spend. "
Trick of the trade: Customers should be encouraged to consume more
For comparison, Streicher developed a shopping cart with parallel handles - similar to a wheelbarrow.
The idea behind it was that people get their possession of the things they want through movements of proximity.
An activity that uses the biceps.
And - you already guessed it - the shopping cart with handles activates the biceps muscle when pushed.
When testing the new shopping trolley in a supermarket in Innsbruck as part of the study, it was found that consumers who used a shopping trolley with parallel handles bought more products and spent around 25 percent more money than consumers with conventional trolleys.
“It was very surprising to us that a small change in the position of the handles can have such a big impact on the buyer's expenses,” says Streicher.