Think the end caps in the grocery store is where all of the best deals are? Think again. You might be paying more than you think for those “sale” products. Here is what you need to know.
Through the years, grocery stores have trained us to expect sales and good deals displayed on the grocery end caps of the stores. While this can be true to some extent, the grocery stores know that those end caps have a big influence over us. They can use that to their advantage to make us shop and pay more for grocery products than we might normally pay for if we weren’t being fooled by our eyes.
In case you aren’t familiar with the term end caps, they are those end of the aisle displays. They will usually, but not always, have a sign on them proclaiming a sale or a price. And marketing research has shown that those end caps can boost grocery sales by a third.
End caps can carry little secrets, though. That price that is loudly announced may not actually be for sale. Instead it may be the regular price and the shelves filled with products that are about to expire.
Another trick of the end cap marketing is to place items that are on sale with other items that are not. Sometimes these items go together such as chips and salsa, while other times they do not. This makes you think that everything on the end cap is on sale or being sold at a discount.
You can still save by shopping the end caps at a grocery store, but you can see how it is important to really examine the products and the prices. In fact, anytime you pick up a product from the grocery store shelf, take a good look at it. This way, you can be a savvy shopper.