Supermarket taxonomy

[ladyofastolat]

As I librarian, I am, of course, very aware of the problems of classification, and I know there is no way on earth that a supermarket can arrange all its items so that everything is in exactly the place that every individual user would expect it to be, grouped next to the items they want it to be next to. I just above forgave them when I trawled up and down the aisles for twenty minutes searching for cream, only to find it on an end-of-aisle display not all that far from the milk. (I only went up and down. When I search and search for an item and fail to find it, it's always always on and end-of-aisle display facing the back of the shop.) I forgave them their hard-to-find tomato puree and dried onions, since I wasn't all that sure where I'd have put them myself.

However, I can not imagine any classification system in which stock cubes should be shelved on the end of an aisle of ice cream, just opposite the section devoted to pet food. I wouldn't have found them at all, had I not suddenly remembered that stuffing - a thing I'm inordinately fond of and therefore buy in great amounts - was shelved on the end of one of the frozen food aisles, miles away from all the rest of the room temperature food. (Pellinor's Catalogue Of The Thousand Pies tells me that the correct term for these products is "ambient.") Following this hunch, I charged off towards the stuffing, and found stock cubes on the end of the adjacent aisle, but I would have given up and gone out without them were not for this knowledge obtained as a result of my stuffing addiction.

Oh, and the other thing shelved on this end-of-aisle display between the ice cream and the cat food? Chewing gum. Analyse that, Mr Dewey.

Actually, I suppose the true moral of this story is that I really ought to ask for help, rather than trudge endlessly up and down the aisles in fruitless quests, but asking for directions is something that I don't do. And, yes, I do come out as categorically male in all those silly internet tests.

Comments

[segh.livejournal.com]

The end-of-aisle displays (known as gondola displays, if you care) cost the food-and-drink companies quite a bit of money, because it is considered that people are more likely to notice (and therefore buy) things on them. So if you have a product to launch or relaunch, your marketing budget might cover advertising, coupons and gondola displays. It clearly doesn't work on you; thousands of marketing departments are probably rethinking their strategies as I write.
And yes, I did formerly work in FMCG.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was surprised to discover that in Whe we buy, since I almost invariably walk right past those sections in a supermarket. Well, not quite invariably; I do notice the end-of-aisle display that is directly facing me as I enter the shop proper, after the fruit-and-veg entry area - though perhaps that's just because I know from experience that that houses current special offers. But the end-of-aisle sections that face the back of the shop - especially those on the end of aisles I seldom use - I just don't notice at all.

Maybe it depends on supermarket design. In the one I use, the aisles are a lot wider than the cross aisles. Every time I venture into the cross aisle, I either get caught up in a traffic jam, or try to get out as soon as possible to avoid a potential jam. It really doesn't encourage lingering.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to learn the sheer effort that goes into planning where to put things. Had a talk at a neuroscience workshop from a computer scientist at Tesco, who develops new data mining algorithms to figure out which items are most commonly bought together (idea being same techniques cd be used to search for correlations in neuronal activity). I had assumed they just used common sense - the toothpaste near the toothbrushes etc - but no, way more sophisticated than that!

N.

[squonk79.livejournal.com]

I've given up with our local Tesco, there's no rhyme to reason to their set up and they change it every other week anyway so you can never find anything.

I don't know why but stock cubes are always opposite the pet food... tis bizarre.

And i never notcie those end of eisle displays either - there's not room to stop and you usually concentrating on just getting round without crashing into anyone else.