Subliminal Influence at the Supermarket (part1)

Few shoppers spare much thought to just how much their purchasing behaviour is being influenced from the moment they step inside a supermarket. In this four-part series, Ted Winder explores the ways in which supermarkets get us to spend so much money and sets out to discover how this can be resisted.

Since the first supermarket opened in the UK in 1951, the concept has grown into a phenomenon that now covers over 120 million square feet of the UK.Almost everyone has been shopping at the supermarket, but few shoppers spare much thought to just how much their behaviour is being influenced from the moment they step inside. Unsurprisingly, however, studies show that every part of a supermarket is designed to get the consumer to spend more money. They take advantage of the suggestibility of the subconscious part of our mind, using a psychological technique called subliminal influence to make us more likely to buy things we may not have previously considered. This article will explore the ways in which supermarkets get us to spend so much money and set out to find how this can be resisted.

Every little detail of a supermarket has been meticulously planned to get you to spend more money.

Many feel that the dominance of supermarkets is due to their use of anti-competitive business practices and aggressive acquisition of land. The Office of Fair Trading reported in 2003 that, “the high market shares of Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco give these companies correspondingly greater strength in competition for new sites.” Smaller local shops are therefore often forced out by the sheer financial might of the corporate giants, which can also anger and disrupt local communities. But as Andrew Simms notes in Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out on Top and Why It Matters , “Local authorities often have to question whether they can risk the cost of long, drawn-out legal battles against much better-resourced, giant chain retailers.” As such, supermarkets aren’t the most trusted of institutions. More often than not, the presence of security guards by the doors and the heavy deployment of CCTV cameras only adds to the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust; a store manager told me that these measures are for the safety of consumers — which they hope will put shoppers at ease and enable them to spend more comfortably — but research shows that a lack of trust is one of the most significant factors undermining an individual’s happiness. Professor David Burch also claims that, “the profitability of retailers is becoming increasingly tied to their reputation and shopper’s perception of their trustworthiness.” The less we trust retailers, the less money they will earn.

Philip Clarke, Tesco CEO

Of course, it is in a supermarket’s interests to get you to spend money, as like any other business their biggest aim is to sell you things and generate profit.This they do very successfully, too: last year, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons collectively saw revenues of over £106 billion , with Tesco alone taking £65 billion of this. This may not come as much of a surprise — after all, you would think that supermarkets have an easier job than most when it comes to selling their products: there’s a guaranteed market for the primary goods they sell (groceries) and consumers are left with little choice but to shop there to purchase these essentials at such affordable prices. With this guaranteed market established and safe, supermarkets can then look for ways to maximize on the traffic that passes through their stores.

The ‘Big Four’ (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons) each spend hundreds of millions of pounds per year doing this. Most of that money is spent on store design and layout — increasingly so in recent years — and not without reason.Every little detail of the store you enter has been meticulously planned to get you to spend more and guide your every impulse. Most of the time you won’t even notice that you’re being influenced; a lot of people like to believe that they are immune to such marketing tricks. That’s because the techniques supermarkets use are subliminal; they appeal to the subconscious part of your mind that acts without you thinking. The atmosphere and ‘experience’ of a supermarket can significantly influence a consumer’s purchasing behaviour.Philip Clarke, Chief Executive of Tesco since 2011, agrees with the many who believe Tesco stores have become “too cold and too industrial,” and claims he is setting out to “warm up” the brand .

Before I go into any more detail about the tricks and techniques supermarkets are using, it would be helpful to understand the part of our brain that they are appealing to.

Subconscious & Subliminal: The Psychology 

The human mind is commonly considered to have two imaginary parts: the conscious and the subconscious. It is important here to understand the difference between the mind — which is what I am referring to here — and the brain: the ‘mind’ is the metaphysical faculty of a person that enables them to be aware of and experience the world, as apposed to the ‘brain,’ which is the physical organ. The conscious mind controls all of our deliberate actions, such as taking a sip from a cup of coffee or doing a star jump. Whenever we are aware of the action we are doing, we can be sure that it is the conscious part of our mind responsible for it. This part of the mind also does most of our thinking: if asked a maths question, for example, it would be the conscious part of our mind that would be used to solve it.

The subconscious mind, on the other hand, is the part of the mind responsible for involuntary actions, emotions, beliefs and memories. The word ‘subconscious’ itself is defined as something “of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings.” Involuntary actions, emotions and beliefs are three very powerful things, and it is somewhat disconcerting to know that the human mind has very little real control over them. It is for this reason that the subconscious mind is targeted by those who want to get you to do what they want.

Even if you don’t know it, your subconscious mind is being targeted all the time, and nowhere more so than the supermarket.

To target the subconscious mind, information must bypass a person’s conscious awareness. This type of information is called the subliminal, and it is perceived by and affects a person’s mind without them being aware of it. This is usually because the information passes so quickly or is so subtle that it does not register in the conscious mind — in other words, we just don’t notice it. Deliberately targeting the subconscious in this way is called ‘priming’.

So how can things that we don’t notice affect how we behave? To understand this, we must distinguish between ‘seeing’ and ‘noticing’. The subconscious part of our mind operates below the level of our conscious awareness, processing and storing incoming information as well as controlling automatic bodily functions. The subconscious is able to process around 20,000 pieces of information per second, while the conscious part can cope only with about 40. Therefore while pretty much every thing we see, hear and feel is absorbed by our subconscious, only the most important and relevant bits of information make their way to our conscious awareness — this is when we ‘notice’ something. This concept is best summed up in what is called ‘The Cocktail Party Effect ’:

“You can talk with a friend at a crowded party and still listen to and understand everything he says even if the place is very noisy. You can simultaneously ignore what another nearby person is saying, but if someone over the other side of the room suddenly mentions your name, you notice that sound and respond to it immediately.Not only does your name immediately trigger your attention, but you are usually aware of the entire sentence it has come in. From this experience we can learn that our brain records everything that takes place around us.” 

The conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg.

To subliminally influence someone, the suggestive messages you target them with must be so slight as to go effectively unnoticed. Subliminal influence is almost always a deliberate process and it is most commonly associated with advertisers and retailers since it enables potential consumers to receive and respond to information and suggestion without them ever being aware of it.Anything that is consciously perceived can be evaluated, criticized, and possibly rejected if we decide so. Anything our subconscious receives subliminally meets significantly less resistance.

This makes subliminal influence a very powerful tool in advertising and marketing. Those who know how can influence a consumer to want (and buy) their products without the consumer having ever had any real reason, or even desire, to do so otherwise. Even if you don’t know it, your subconscious mind is being targeted all the time, and nowhere more so than the supermarket.