One third more bananas are sold if placed near store checkout.

The University of Bonn opened its own supermarket, in which pineapples, canned tomatoes, and toast are neatly lined up on black shelves. The space measuring 55 square meters (approx. 600 square feet) has pretty much everything you’d need in everyday life. The ‘clientele’, however, is very special: they are subjects participating in scientific studies. Here, researchers from the fields of food and resource economics, psychology, economics, and behavioral science are investigating how health- and sustainability-oriented purchases can be encouraged, for example, through product placement and other incentives. Robots are also demonstrating their capabilities here.

No store labelling, no need for advertising

No billboards in sight, no bicycle racks with a company logo: anyone standing in front of the white building complex on Am Probsthof would have no idea that it contains a replica of a small supermarket. There is no need for advertising, as the ‘laboratory supermarket’ is purely for scientific purposes. Anyone who comes here has been chosen as a test subject and is allowed to browse among the shelves. What they select should be recorded with scientific precision.

Simply replacing snacks by healthy fruit

If bananas are placed near the checkout, they are purchased around a third more often than in other corners of the supermarket. This has long been known by marketing strategists. However, what other incentives can still be created in self-service stores of this kind so that the clientele is more likely to opt for healthier products with less fat, sugar or salt? How must the packaging be positioned and designed so that sustainably produced goods, in particular, also have a chance? Everyone talks about animal welfare: how do these products achieve good sales despite higher prices? More questions are set to be investigated by Bonn University with scientific rigor. It is not difficult for the participants to get involved, as they feel as though they are customers in a ‘normal’ supermarket. Cameras record their decision to buy – with special software that makes it impossible to identify people. Only silhouettes can be seen.

Realistic shopping experience

“We can only identify how many test subjects choose packaging version A or B,” explains Prof. Dr Dominic Lemken who coordinates the experiment. The University of Bonn has already experimented with virtual supermarkets before. The subjects sit at a screen, seemingly steer a shopping cart between the shelves using a keyboard, and can select certain products in this pixelated world. Experience shows that this provides more reliable results than surveys alone. “However, the laboratory supermarket is even more realistic,” says Lemken. “People can fall even better into their usual shopping habits here, which we then evaluate.” After all, when people go shopping for real, the things they buy are not necessarily on their shopping list. Completely different products often become appealing. That’s when things get interesting for science.

Photo: Gregor Hübl; Source: Uni Bonn.

For more information about how to stimulate healthy shopping, you can write here.