Saving on Grocery Expenses
by: Yossarian Sharpe
Grocery bills take a large chunk out of the household budget and the reality is,
many of our purchases are bought on impulse. While it is important to allocate sufficiently
for your basic needs, there is something to be said about smart spending. It is
possible to cut down on grocery expenses while still providing for all of your needs.
Retail Tricks
Supermarkets put in place many merchandising strategies that are designed to get
customers to make more purchases than necessary. Knowing these tricks and how to
avoid them is the first step towards saving on grocery expenses.
The layout of a store is designed to lure customers into making impulse buys. For
example, household basics and essentials are usually placed in the middle of an
aisle and are flanked on both sides by shelves containing luxury and unnecessary
items. Naturally, before you get to the item that you need, you will first walk
by the things that you don’t. The more time you spend moving through those shelves,
the more attractive those nonessentials start to look.
Displays are also made in such a way so that people will take an item out of convenience
or perceive an item to be a bargain. Most of the merchandise placed at eye-level
are usually the high-priced brands while the most affordable varieties are at the
base of the shelf. Why? Because generally, people don’t like to bend when they are
shopping and the tendency is to go for the item that is easily within your reach.
There are also ways in which supermarkets make it appear that something is on sale.
They throw products in a large container or they highlight the price of an item
that didn’t actually change during the week.
Price Notebook and Sale Watch
To become adept at bargain hunting, you will have to keep a price notebook. On your
price notebook you will write down the regular prices of grocery items as well as
their sale prices. You also list down the time of the week, month or year when these
items usually go on sale. Keeping tabs on grocery prices is a smart spending strategy,
because if you know when these items go on sale, you can buy enough to last you
until the next promotion comes along. That way, you purchase most of your needs
at sale prices at the majority of the time. A price notebook also comes in handy
for when the supermarkets put up a promo that will actually be followed by another
sale featuring an even lower price. If you know that an even bigger bargain is in
the works, you can hold off until that sale is in effect.
Loss Leaders
Take advantage of loss leaders. A loss leader is a product that is being sold at
a low price. Supermarkets typically execute this campaign to elicit more potentially
profitable purchases since shoppers are likely to buy other things aside from the
loss leader items. These types of grocery items allow for considerable savings since
supermarkets implement a mark down of up to 50 percent off of the original price.
Source:articlebiz.com