Believe it or not your local supermarket is interested in ensuring that you eat healthy writes Michael Moss:

• In one experiment shopping carts were divided with a yellow line and shoppers were encouraged to put fruits and vegetables in the front half. Produce sales per customer more than doubled from $3.99 to $8.85.
• Large plastic mats with green arrows that point to the produce section successfully convinced around 90% of customers to follow the arrow.
• Another effective tactic was to place a mirror in the shopping cart so that shoppers could see themselves as they shopped.
• Placing placards inside baskets that tell customers how much produce customers were buying and what the most popular items were was successful by informing shoppers about social norms.
• Supermarkets are implementing such strategies because while overall sales stay the same, they shift towards produce which generally has a higher markup than other food items, leading to healthy customers and healthy profits.

Read some other fascinating insights about how customers shop in supermarkets, why too much encouragement can backfire, and more over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: The Incidental Economist