At the supermarket

‘Dear customers, today our master butcher recommends our prime quality calf’s liver, one hundred grams for just 1 euro 85 cents . And, for the whole of August, we have a special offer on our bumper pack of sanitary towels.’ Not that voice again, I think as I steer my oversized trolley determinedly on the shortest route to the soft drinks section.

Wherever you may be in the world, when you enter a supermarket you are always welcomed by the same glib, over-friendly and artificially cheerful loudspeaker announcements. Not only is the message always identical; I am firmly convinced that it’s always the same person reading it. Just imagine all the ‘Dear customers’ storming the checkouts, their trolleys piled high with calf’s liver and bumper packs of sanitary towels!

My trolley laden with orange juice, spring water and a few other items that weren’t on my shopping list, I turn the corner from the cereal aisle into the pasta aisle, and all at once I make eye contact with a friendly, smiling woman. She is almost concealed behind a tower of artfully presented cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks. Instinctively, I wonder how I can avoid the inevitable sales patter. ‘Would you like to try some, sir?’ She smiles and holds out a cube of cheese on a little silver platter with a paper napkin. ‘No thanks, I’m not hungry!’ I say, pointing to my stomach to underline my idiotic reply. Idiotic because you don’t have to be hungry to eat a 1-centimetre cube of cheese and because I have now outed myself as a particularly dim-witted customer. And that bothers me.

I arrive at the checkout. My purchases are scanned and, after the obligatory ‘peep’, are transported to the back of the desk for packing. ‘No, I don’t have a customer card.’ ‘No, I don’t collect the discount stamps,’ I reply to the stereotypical questions. ‘Thirty-six thirty change, sir.’

‘Hello,’ the woman on the checkout says to the customer behind me, who has separated his purchases from mine with one of those little plastic bars. The words ‘Emmental, mild – Special offer double-pack’ catch my eye as the customer on the next checkout places his purchases on the conveyor belt. Aha! A victim of the ‘Cheese-Cubes-on-a-Silver-Platter Campaign’! Feeling a little proud of myself, I hold my head high, happy in the knowledge that I didn’t fall for it!

Amazingly good!

A supermarket in the United States provides magnifying glasses for its older customers and customers with poor eyesight. These glasses enable them to read the information on the packages or on the shelves without having to ask for help. A chain of fashion stores in the United States has found a very special way to attract more regular customers. On a series of designated days, customers can hand in worn clothing there. In return, they receive a $10 voucher valid on clothing purchases worth at least $50. The store gives the second-hand clothing to a charity organization.

A department store in the UK aims to persuade its customers to use the stairs instead of taking the escalator. Signs on all the escalators encourage shoppers to do something to improve their personal fitness. Normally, at most 10 out of 100 customers will take the stairs if there is an escalator. When these encouraging signs were introduced, that figure doubled. This rewarding yet simple marketing campaign also attracted a lot of media attention for the store.

In the United States, there is a special department store for outdoor freaks where customers spend an average of two to three hours per visit. The store has become a real tourist attraction and a meeting point for fans of leisure and outdoor activities. It has a waterfall, campfire sites located in the centre of an area with rock gardens, cycle and hiking trails, rain-testing chambers, refrigerated chambers for testing polar expedition equipment, light-testing rooms and a mountain peak for climbing, all with the aim not so much of presenting its products, but of giving its customers a taste of nature and the fun activities offered by the great outdoors.