Trader Joe's smaller parking lots help keep their prices low
What? Here's something I didn't really expect. If you're wondering why Trader Joe's has lower prices than, say, Whole Foods, you can sort of attribute that to their small parking lots. Because of their smaller footprint, Trader Joe's is able to sell more per square foot than other grocery stores which means more savings passed down to the consumer in the end. An interesting trickle-down scenario if I ever heard one.
How Grocery Stores Are Cleverly Designed to Make You Spend More Money
I feel like I read about some of this stuff when I read Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice a few years back. So it wasn't a complete surprise to me to know that grocery stores have a specific pattern and layout to encourage the buyer to purchase the highest amount of goods per trip. It's not too different from the things I've heard about American mall layouts and how escalators and elevators are often positioned opposite or far from each other so that customers have to walk past other things to get to their intended destination.
I do wonder though if online sales of groceries have hit these grocery stores hard. With Fresh Direct and Amazon groceries, do online product recommendations translate to the same dollar amount sales as perfect aisle placement?