‘Genuine pulling power’: The supermarket staple that could be bad news for your grocery budget

Coles in Castle Hill, Sydney has moved its popular roast chickens from right near the entrance to the back of the store as part of a recent store refresh.

The move is part of a trend in which supermarkets optimise the location of key grocery items to maximise how much shoppers spend during a single visit.

“If it’s an attractive product that attracts people to come to the store, they will make it harder to find, so people are exposed to more products along the way,” consumer psychologist Dr Shasha Wang from QUT told nine.com.au.

“This exposure could increase the chance of people picking up other products.”

These attractive products, Griffith University consumer expert Gavin Northey explained, are roast chickens, milk, bread, eggs, and toilet paper, which are “basic household staples”.

“Hot roast chickens are like staple products on steroids. This is because unlike milk and bread, which people will buy at whichever store is nearest, the roast chook has genuine pulling power of its own,” Northey told nine.com.au.

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“It’s a complete dinner solution, and shoppers develop loyalties to roast chickens from different supermarkets. That pushes it into what retailers call a ‘destination product’ because that product can trigger the trip itself.

“That’s exactly why Coles can afford to put it at the back of the store, because they know consumers will venture further into their store specifically to get the chicken.

“From the retailer’s standpoint, that makes the consumer walk past the bakery, biscuits and any other products in their path, which means increased potential for sales.”

Similar roast chicken product placement can be observed at Woolworths and Costco, with both grocery retailers also placing their roast chickens towards the back of their stores.

“Costco is absolutely the global benchmark with roast chickens,” Northey said.

“They deliberately place their roast chickens at the back of the store next to higher-margin items like wine and side dishes, because research has shown very few people simply buy the chicken and leave.”

Roast chickens at Coles, Woolworths and Costco are labelled “loss-leaders”, meaning the retailers don’t make a significant profit on sales of them, if they make profits on them at all.

Instead, they serve a different purpose.

“Not only do roast chickens make consumers travel further through the store, it keeps them in the store longer. This increases their ‘dwell time’, which is a metric retailers obsess over because it has an incredibly strong correlation to basket size and overall spend,” Northey said.

“Basically, the longer you stay in the store, the more you’re likely to spend. So in relation to the Coles roast chickens, consumers enter the store looking for a $10 chicken but end up spending $34 on a range of complementary products or unplanned purchases.

“From a strategic perspective, this is exactly what supermarkets are trying to achieve. Supermarkets aren’t competing for the $10, they’re competing for a bigger ‘share’ of each consumer’s weekly food spend.

“The chicken is a meal-solution anchor that almost mandates the consumer also purchases bread rolls, salad and dessert, as well as tomorrow’s lunch (wraps, mayo, lettuce).

“Every purchase captured in-store is a dollar clawed back from the charcoal chicken shop and the rival supermarket.

“Ultimately, the cheap roast chicken draws the crowd, everything around it carries the margin.”

Wang said similar thought is put into each aisle and section at the supermarket.

“Another example is that you’ll find on the shelves in the middle section, this is normally not the premium brands,” she said.

“The premium brands are typically on the top or bottom shelf, unless they [the brands] pay more, because manufacturers pay different prices for different locations.

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“Premium brands do more marketing, so people recognise [them] and look for them.

“For example, if you see Mount Franklin water, the display is on the top or the bottom, and the home brand water is in the middle section, making it easier for people to pick.”

However, don’t expect to see exact supermarket layouts replicated at multiple locations. Instead, each location is designed to maximise local customer behaviour.

Clearly, Coles’ Castle Hill customers love their roast chickens.

“There are differences between different locations, too. Not all supermarkets have the same design,” Wang says.

“I believe this is associated with local consumer consumption patterns.”