Spend Less at the Grocery Store by Putting Your Phone Away
Impossible to get distracted at the grocery store: there are temptations at every turn: bright signs with discounts! Sample tables! New seltzer tastes ! You might think keeping your nose on your phone – flipping through podcast episodes, calling your mom – will keep you from falling into the marketing gimmicks of modern grocery stores. But it turns out that if you fiddle with your phone in the aisles of a store, you may end up spending more than you bargained for.
Don’t believe me? Two recent studies show that using the phone for non-shopping list tasks increases costs at the grocery store. This distinction is important: if you use shopping list apps or rely on your favorite store’s app to validate your circular, you are unlikely to be distracted from what will affect your spending. But the moment you click on that text notification that appears when you check for a cashback refund for wine in a box, the distraction action starts to add up.
In a study published in the Journal of Marketing for 2018, used technology tracking eye movements, sales receipts and surveys to determine the use of the phone at the time of purchase of products and increased costs. Phone use has increased the amount of time spent in the store, which has increased shelf focus (how much time you spend looking at products and prices) and yaw (changing your path through the aisles). All this leads to increased costs. While this study notes that phone use actually resulted in lower checkout costs – since Twitter checkout prevents you from checking Us Weekly headlines and Kit Kats prices – by now, the damage from being distracted elsewhere is already was inflicted.
Another study, published in the Journal of the Marketing Science, surveyed shoppers at large stores like Kroger, Target, or Costco to find out how cell phone use affects their shopping list. Fast Company sums it up:
Those who used their phone to shop in unrelated ways were 9% more likely to buy items they never intended to buy when they went to the store. And the goods they bought were more hedonistic (such as chocolates, snacks, electronics, and toys) than practical.
If you’re determined to use your phone to check your shopping list, search for refund discounts, or cut store coupons, consider turning off other notifications while you’re in the store. If you find yourself using your phone for other tasks while looking through the aisles, you can return to your paper list so you don’t get distracted from the task. Otherwise, you may end up with a few extra items in your shopping cart.