The Shopping Experience - How the Setting Influences What We Buy

A couple of years ago, I walked into a Kroger grocery store looking for Annie’s macaroni and cheese. I searched all of the logical aisles, but I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t with the Kraft macaroni, and it wasn’t even with the other pasta. In frustration, I left, only to find out a few weeks later that Kroger keeps its Annie’s macaroni in a natural foods section, sequestered from all of the other food in the store. The simple layout of their food had kept me from what I wanted, but, more importantly, it had also kept me from finding organic food.

Kroger’s set up has important implications for who will buy organic foods. For someone who comes into the store knowing that she wants almost all organic foods, this natural foods section will save her time, energy, and thought. It will serve as a one-stop shop for everything she wants. But another shopper making her way through Kroger, looking generally for some pasta, apples, tomato sauce, and carrots, may end up with a cart full of pesticide-ridden food, simply because she did not encounter any organic food in her normal run through the store. 

So, the dedicated buyer of organic food will have an easier time through the store, but the average consumer will miss out on all of the organic food that may have ended up in her cart. She isn’t avoiding the organic food, but it’s just not convenient or visible, a huge factor in whether or not people end up buying organic food according to Hjelmar’s study. Participants noted the importance of being able to get in and out of a grocery store quickly with a set routine, and if the organic food is off on its own, most consumers won’t encounter it.

Hjelmar’s study notes that Denmark has a very high per capita consumption of organic foods, but most participants in the study did not eat exclusively organic food. Instead of going to an all organic store like Whole Foods, most participants went to grocery stores that had both conventionally farmed foods and organic foods, then bought some of each. Could the United States’ specialty stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s cater to dedicated organic food buyers but cut out the number of organic food sales for other shoppers who would buy some organic food if it were more visible? Most people won’t make the extra trip to an all-organic store or the farmer’s market to get a couple extra groceries, so how can typical grocery stores help increase organic food sales?

On a different trail of thinking, it is interesting to reconsider Kingsolver’s approach to food: take it slow, get to know people, enjoy the process. Does grocery shopping have to be a chore in which we invest as little time as possible, the way that Hjelmar’s participants view it? How can we change this mindset? This summer, I often walked to the farmer’s market, stopped in at the Market House, went over to Creative Crust to get a loaf of bread, and made a final stop at Top’s for whatever I couldn’t get elsewhere. Sometimes, when I got my car out, I even threw in a trip to Al’s Melons. I spoke to the people selling me food, and I grocery shopped at least two or three times I week, sometimes more.  It was also a highlight of my summer, getting to carefully choose what fresh ingredients would make up meals. Like the farmer’s market customers in Weiss’s article, I was buying the experience of knowing my food producers in addition to buying food, and it made the entire process enjoyable, a way to spend a Saturday morning or Wednesday afternoon rather than a time-sucking event that I needed to get done with.

If we took this slower approach, what would change about our food experience? Both Hjelmar and Keebaugh et al. note that price plays an important role in deterring people from buying organic food. Would those with enough money - but who are still concerned about frugality - feel more willing to spend the extra money if they took the time to go to a farmer’s market or a local grocery store where the people, sounds, and smells would add to the enjoyment of shopping? Would families spend more time purchasing food together and subsequently making meals? 

This slow-down approach certainly won’t solve everything - price is still a limiting factor for too many families - but it seems like it could affect how we view our entire food experience and, therefore, organic and local foods. Could the farmer’s market, used as a family event, decrease the tension that Hjelmar’s participants felt between buying organic and buying what their children like? How much power lies in the shopping experience to change our buying habits?