There is an old saying about advertising – 50% works, 50% does not, the problem is no one knows which 50% works. In the book The Manipulators by Jeffery Robinson published by Simon & Schuster, London 1998, Mr. Robinson looks at the 50% that should be working. Advertising is more of an art than science, but over the years billions of data have been gathered and analyzed to make it more of a science. When it works it is like magic, when it does not work it is seemingly easy to see why, but those ads still get made. The goal of advertising is for you to buy something, but why are we buying is the reason why the ads should work or work better. The searching for the why leads to understanding how emotions work and the brain works and crafting the message to it. Companies often focus their marketing efforts around their advertising spend whatever they can to tell us what the product is and what it will do for us. They are betting that once informed we will make a rational judgement to buy or not to buy. How are rational our judgement is becomes another matter. Most of the time we buy on emotion, justify on fact afterwards.  What is more most of the time we are not buying goods or services, we are buying solutions that we hope will suit us.

Many of us shop at supermarkets and that is where the theory meets the practice very well. The average person tends to buy 2 or 3% of what is in the store, the makers of the products need to use every technique in the book to make you pick their product. The average supermarket carries about 20,000 items, each of the products has been packaged, advertised and displayed for you to buy it. This translates to a 60% of the purchases at the supermarket tend to be impulse buys. This means there is a reason why stores need you to walk around it and the basics are in the 4 corners. The aisles are set up purposely to encourage this and grouped around family of products. On your list is a basic food, shelved near by is many other choices which are related to your basic food choice. You are thinking as long as I buying the basic, maybe I will pick up something related to the item.

On the best shelves are those with the biggest margins which encourages greater turnover. The shelf is at eye level for the normal person. The items closest to the floor have the lowest turnover. Research has shown our eyes tend to move vertically first going up, then down. The exception to the rule is when a company has given the company money to be placed in a better location. Another rule is shelves must be kept full, few people will buy the last item, but a full shelf is a great temptation.

Some products while seemingly for adults are for kids and the companies attempt to ensure the kids will demand the item while the parents are shopping.  The lighting is soft lighting, the stores are air-conditioned, there are impulse items at the cashier and a host of other things designed for you to spend more than you had planned to spend.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, many of the companies which pay dividends over the years are to be found in the supermarket which means the companies are getting it right more often. While grocery shopping can be a chore, once in while look around to see how the companies are trying to encourage you to buy their products. All the products have been designed by somebody who wants you to buy, which of them did not get it right and what would you do to change it?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.