Shopping as the "Other"

When going to the grocery store I wasn’t expecting much to be directly marketed towards me personally.  I thought “alright when I shop where do I go to first?”  I usually end up towards the vegetables because they are the very first thing I see when entering the grocery store.  And then I thought again and realized that the vegetables were displayed at the front of every store I have ever been in! Now purposely trying to avoid the vegetables I started to realize that everything was geared towards one demographic, and that was mine; the male demographic.  I found chips, racks and racks of beer, sodas, chilies, soups and platters all revolving around one thing; Game Day.  There were sales on thirty racks of beer, buy one get one free bags of chips, 2 for 5.99 boxes of soda and 99 cent cans of Chunky “Man Soup.”   Being in a college town tail gaiting and college “weekend recreational activities” were all a target in this store.  The labels and advertising of these foods were also geared towards men.  Football players, half naked women and athletic teams were all incorporated into the design of the product, playing off the notion of “this person promotes this product, so I must buy it.” After realizing that I have completely fallen for all of these marketing schemes before, I began to think about the second task of what it would be like if I were someone else shopping for these products and if companies did the same thing to them.

I began by imagining what it would be like if I were a women shopping, but then began to realize that the audience most targeted by these companies were children.  All of the cereals we eat, all of the sodas we drink, all of the candy we consume, all of the snacks and unhealthy products that were known to be our guilty pleasure were geared towards the desires of children.  Cartoon characters, bright colors, catchy slogans and iconic figures covered the faces of these labels.  I also noticed that everything was at eye level of a child or of the seat of the grocery cart.  Every name brand product was towards the middle of the shelves.  The worst part is you begin to realize that all of these things are also located at the checkout stand where you have to wait for days to pay for your groceries and all you end up doing is reading the magazines while your kid begs for candy. 

The placing of food is crucial in the marketing strategies of these leading corporations.  Mapped out the vegetables, meats, breads and dairy products are all located on the outskirts of the store.  You can call these the “real foods” and the “processed foods” were in the middle.  Candy was in the very first aisle, followed by cereals, canned foods, chips, beer/ drinks, frozen foods, and then all the way tucked in the back is the essentials of milk, orange juice and eggs.  The three things that are most likely run out first in your house hold are strategically placed in the back corner so you have to walk through everything else to reach them.  After walking about a half mile through the store you are reminded that you forgot to grab something else you needed, distracting you from your ultimate goal of that one gallon of milk.  You then walk out with a bill of fifty dollars instead of the initial five that you were originally supposed to spend. 

As we go through the grocery store we also begin to realize all of the different choices we have for this one product.  How come we need so many varieties of cereals or so many varieties of sodas, chips, vegetables and meats?  In reality we are only choosing from about seven to ten due to the small bottle neck corporations that are leading the human consumption.  But we are at fault too.  We are falling for their conniving marketing tactics and are demanding they supply these products.  But we won’t stop here, with even newer products that we will like are produced we will begin to demand more and more and this becomes a large cycle feeding to the larger food chain.  Yes these corporations are at blame because they are hypnotizing us and our younger generations to consume their products, but we are ultimately the ones who are giving them this power. 

EXACTLY.