Merchandising

Why Do Grocery Stores Have Sales? (and how they get picked)

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Grocery store sales often seem like a great deal. But sometimes when we look a little closer, we might realize it’s not quite as good a deal as we thought. So why do grocery stores have sales?

Manufacturers give stores discounts which temporarily lower the price on well-known items as well & newly introduced items. But, grocery stores often discount items that are short-dated or out of season in order to sell through excess inventory. Any dollars are better than no dollars if it has to be thrown away.

But there’s a lot more to know about grocery stores and products on sale.

So in this article, we’re diving deep into the sometimes complicated world of grocery store sales. We’ll look at why they have sales instead of just everyday low prices. But we’ll also explore how they pick items and how to get the most out of your discounts.

Let’s dive in!

Are grocery store sales designed to make shoppers buy more?

Yes. Grocery stores put items on sale that you might not otherwise plan to purchase. But they may also put things on sale that naturally go together with other items, such as a sale on red wine displayed next to bags of pasta and jars of sauce.

For most people, buying groceries is a well-planned activity.

We take inventory of what’s in our cupboard. Then we make a list. We might even use our store’s coupon app to see what coupons are available for us to use.

Most of us with families never go to the store without a list and fixed budget. For my wife and me, that day is Thursdays and we allocate exactly $200 for our family of 5 to get us through 1 week. But if that sounds like a lot, I still remember back when our budget was $80 for the week.

That works most of the time but sometimes, when there are awesome sales, it fails to work.

This is because the sales are enticing and are presented in a way that makes us think that we getting more value for their money.

Now if it’s something already on our list, that’s great.

But most of the time they aren’t things we need or thought of. They are “wants” and not “needs” if you get my distinction.

This is one of the reasons why stores use sales. It helps them drive customers to make extra purchases which mean more profit for them.


Having sales also bring attention to products that don’t sell as fast.

By placing sales or coupons on slow-selling items, more people will be able to notice the products and possibly want to try them out.

If they end up liking it, they will come back for more in the future.

If it picks up sales such that the store doesn’t have to get rid of it, that’s a win-win for the store, the customer, and the manufacturer.

The best way to stick to your budget is to stick to your list and walk right on by those enticing sales.

Even if the products have great discounts, if you end up throwing them away when they go out of date, you haven’t actually saved anything.

How do grocery stores decide what goes on sale?

Most of the time the grocery stores don’t decide what to put on sale.

Such decisions are usually made by the manufacturers who supply the stores with products. That’s at least true of what goes into the store sales flyer. Those products are often presented to the store’s corporate buyers by the manufacturer’s sales reps 6 or more months in advance.

In other cases, however, the store or department managers can decide to put something on sale. That’s especially true of what’s called “short-dated products. These are things that are expiring soon. In this case, selling them at a discount is better than throwing them away and making nothing.

Grocery stores may also place items on sale based on the season.

For instance, you’re not likely to see whole turkeys being put on sale other than right after Thanksgiving. This is because after Thanksgiving is done, most people don’t want to buy turkeys. So if they over-bought for Thanksgiving and have a ton left over, a sale may be the only thing that can save their profit margins.

The same applies to other products such as hams that are put on sale after Easter.

The seasonal discounts are also driven by the competitiveness among grocery stores. Most people will be looking for a specific product during the specific season.

So, most stores will want to outdo each other and have the best prices. That enables them to make the most sales possible.

This can only be done by giving consumers the discounts they want. So often that means putting things on sale to bring the customers in.  They also know that if a customer comes into their store for a specific item, they are more likely to do the rest of that shopping there too.

They also are more likely to convert that shopper to shop there for the rest of the year too.

Can I use a coupon on top of a sale price?

In most cases, yes you can use a coupon on an item already on sale. But always read the coupon first.  There are store coupons, manufacturer coupons, and some are online, while others are paper. Often times the coupon will be from a manufacturer whereas the sale price will be from the store.

You should understand the limits that every store has before you try to combine them.

My local HEB store where my wife and I shop has an online coupon app. But we still grab the store’s paper coupons for items we’re buying just in case. While not always the case, there have been plenty of times that an item is on sale plus has a coupon.

So yes, in those cases, we get both discounts, which is great!

By learning about the limitations, you’ll be able to find the best deals. Just watch the cash register as you are checking out to make sure you’re getting your discounts.

These days store POS (point of sale) systems are complicated.

Most chain stores have corporate tech teams who program the coupons and sale prices. Then the local stores often have IT people maintaining that. And that’s on top of the cashiers ringing everything up.

Every step along that process is a chance for human error to come into play. So it pays to pay attention when you’re getting rung up.

On top of combining a sale price and a coupon, there is also what’s known as coupon stacking.

In this case, you use both a store coupon and a manufacturer coupon. Target is one of the big stores that allow this, but a place like Wal-Mart doesn’t. Check with your local store to see if they allow it.

It’s a great way to get even better savings!

Here is a handy cheat sheet for some of the biggest store’s coupon policies

Store Allows Competitor Coupons? Allows More Than 1 Coupon Per Item? Allows Digital Coupons on  Your Phone? Has Coupon App for Android? Has Coupon App for Apple?
Safeway No Varies by store No. Must be printed Yes – Safeway Deals & Rewards Yes – Safeway Deals & Rewards
Kroger No stated policy No stated policy Yes as long as it scans Yes – Kroger Yes – Kroger
Walmart No No No No No
Target No Yes, but only 1 of each type Yes as long as it scans Yes – Target Yes – Target
Whole Foods No, except stores in Michigan Yes, but only 1 of each type Yes as long as it scans Shows Sales but Doesn’t Have Coupons Shows Sales but Doesn’t Have Coupons

Why don’t grocery stores just have everyday low prices instead of sales?

Having prices on daily low prices is great in theory. And some chains do operate that way like Aldi, for instance.

The downside to that is it can give the impression the store is low-end or cheap. That is, indeed, how most people see Aldi.

Consumers will have the impression that the products sold by that store are cheap. Even worse if they think a store is selling returned or out of date items. Once a store gets that reputation, they often lose all but the most frugal bargain shoppers.

Aside from Aldi, other discounters like Grocery Outlet also fit that model. Although truth be told, most of those types of stores still have sales.

Having a sale also makes customers feel like they are getting a deal. This gives them loyal customers and major sales can put them above the competition.

But sales are also designed to get customers to buy products they don’t even need.

This makes it a great way for the stores to clear out some of the old products without incurring huge losses. Or gets new products in the hands of consumers who might not know of that product yet.

Plus in many cases, it’s the manufacturer giving at least some of the savings, so it’s not all coming from the grocery store’s profit.

Most stores only put up sales for a specific duration.

Some also have clearance sections all the time. By doing that, their customers actually seek out the clearance section. And even at a deep discount, every purchase off the clearance shelf is a purchase no one planned to make.

And again, even selling something at 50% off is better than throwing it away and making nothing.

What day do grocery stores mark down meat?

Tuesdays are one of the best days to shop around for discounted meat. Most grocery stores get their meat during the weekend and then again later in the week. So after a busy weekend, they will often discount whatever’s left to make room for the next delivery.

Of course, different stores have different policies too, and busier stores may get multiple deliveries throughout the week.

So there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

But for those that do, they will try to sell it as soon as possible by Monday. Any meat still on the shelf will be marked down.

It’s also a good idea to shop around any day after the store has had a big sale.

The big sales usually have some discounted prices. But if you go one day after the sale is over you’ll most likely find what was left after the sale.

And those will be even cheaper than the price used during the sale!

The right timing is also as important as going on the right days. For meat departments, in particular, those employees and the meat manager typically work early; like 4 am or so.

So between 8am and 10am shortly after they’ve checked the dates of what’s on their shelves is a great time to shop. They’ve culled their shelves and slapped sale stickers on anything close dated.

Shopping during these times is also ideal because there are a few people available in the stores.

As I said above, every chain might operate a little differently from one another.  So befriending the employees or butcher is a great idea.

You’ll be able to find out their schedules regarding the markdowns. And you’ll be able to get the best deals.

Remember to keep the discounted meat frozen if you can’t use all of it immediately. A ziplock freezer bag helps keep freezer burn away, but unopened packages of meat or poultry should be fine at least for a few weeks to a month.

Is buying discounted meat or poultry a good idea?

Yes. As long as the meat or poultry isn’t past its freshness date, you can save a lot of money buying discounted meat. Just place it in the freezer when you get home, and then use it within 3 months when it may start to develop freezer burn.

Like other discounted products, buying poultry and beef for a discount can help you save a lot of money.

So that makes it a good idea. Just don’t buy stuff solely because it’s on sale. Know what you already have in your fridge or freezer. Then plan out your meals and buy accordingly. That ensures you don’t end up wasting something.

Buying discounted meat helps you save a lot of money and is a great way to cut your grocery bill.

Because it was almost expired when you bought it do be cautious when thawing. Many people like to thaw frozen meat by setting it in the sink for hours on end.  Since this product was close to bad, it should not be thawed that way.

Instead, you can either use your microwave defrost setting. Or, place the meat or poultry in a ziplock bag and place it in a sink filled with warm water. Then just place a heavy pot on top to keep it submerged.

20 minutes should be about right to thaw most things.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we took an in-depth look at the world of grocery stores and sales.

We examined why they have sales and how they pick the items that go on sale. But we also looked into things like when meat goes on sale. And if buying meat on sale is a good idea.

Ultimately, we answered the question of why do grocery stores have sales.

Sales are usually good for both the consumer and the store but as the customer, you have to ensure that you choose your products carefully and check their expiration dates.

Try to avoid impulse buying.

But if you can’t, make sure you can use the items you’re buying on sale; especially if the expiration date is close. You should also try to get value for your money by looking for things on sale that also have a coupon available for discount stacking.

Why Do Grocery Stores Change the Layout? (the real reason)

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Love it or hate it, we all go grocery shopping. But if you know grocery stores, you know they frequently move stuff around. For most shoppers, these changes are confusing and often leads to the question, why do grocery stores change the layout?

Driven by lower profit margins & high competition, grocery stores are desperate to make their stores better than their competitors. One of the best ways to do that is by changing the layout. But it’s also a way to force shoppers down every aisle, counting on them making additional purchases they hadn’t planned on making.

But there’s a lot more to know about why they change stuff, how they do it, and how often it happens.

So let’s keep going!

Why do grocery stores rearrange everything?

Like other businesses, grocery stores want to make as many sales as possible.

This is the best way to make additional profit and possibly expand. After all, the average grocery store only makes a net profit of around 2%. Think of it this way. For every dollar they take in, only about 2 cents is actually profit after every expense gets paid.

I go into much greater detail on grocery store profit margins in a recent article. In that, I also explain why a Whole Foods, for instance, might make 2-3 times as much profit percentage as a Safeway or Kroger.

Just click the link to read it on my site.

So to maximize those profits, they need their customers to purchase more items than they intended to in the first place. For that to happen, they need to make it harder for the customers to find the items they need.

This is where rearranging the store comes in.

Moving whole aisles or departments

By changing where the items are placed, the customers will have to walk around the store as they try to locate what they want. For instance, if you visit the store today then go back a few months later, you’ll find that some items are not where you found them.

As you walk around trying to locate them, you’ll see other items that catch your eye and you’ll end up buying them in impulse. If the products were left in the same place year after year, you’d probably pick up exactly what you came for.

Then, most likely you would leave without ever buying anything else.

Rearranging the store also allows the placement of best-selling products at the front and that ends up enticing the customers. But savvy retailers also know that profits are higher on some items more than others. So they’ll also rearrange things putting the higher-margin items more in your face.

Moving certain shelves or areas

The other time stores rearrange is when a new product comes out.

There are times when a product stops being made by the company. Or, maybe it just didn’t sell well and your store decided to stop selling it. Or a popular brand introduced some hot new products.

In all of those cases, the store has to rearrange stuff to fill the space of a product that went away, and/or make room for the new stuff.

Lastly, rearranging items allows the store to get rid of products that are about to expire.

They might build a whole display of potato chips that expire in 2 months. They hope to sell at least some of them before they go out of date. After all, any bag sold, even at a discount, is one they don’t have to throw away and lose 100% profit on.

What is it called when you rearrange a store?

Rearranging a whole store, or just certain departments or aisles is called a reset.

A reset involves taking everything off a given shelf or the whole aisle (or occasionally the whole store), deciding how to rearrange it, and then putting it back.

In the old days when I started with Whole Foods, we just did the planning part on paper or in our heads. And I still remember doing one at the original Whole Foods store (long gone) where we had a whole aisle collapse 10 minutes before the store opened!

These days, however, there is what they call category management software or planogram software that can design the layout for you.

It does require a lot of work on the front end as you have to enter the size of every product (boxes, cans, bottles, etc). You also have to enter in the cost and sales price. Then it gets fancy and gives you the best layout based on sales, profit, and the packaging size as well as what products make sense sitting next to each other.

For displays, however, which change more frequently, there is also what’s called cross-merchandising.

This is the process where you place products together even when they are not directly related, to try to boost their sales. For instance, by placing produce next to the flowers, customers’ sensory is tricked into thinking that the products are fresh thanks to the smell of the flowers.

But anytime you see a display of boxes of pasta and jars of pasta sauce with a stack of wine bottles, that’s cross-merchandising too.

Most consumers tend to buy only items they need from the store; many just going down a written shopping list. So grocery stores can get these customers to add-on by placing additional items nearby they might buy on impulse.

How is a grocery store organized?

1. The front of the store

Most stores start by placing flowers at the front.

That is often the first item customers see when they get into the store. Produce is placed next to the flowers because of the freshness of the flowers. The freshest and most seasonal produce (and also often the cheapest) is placed at the front while that is not so fresh and is put in the back.

That’s designed to give the impression that everything is fresh, seasonal and low-priced.

Other products kept near the entrance are those that are referred to as “grab and go”. These are items such as bottled water, snacks, and even milk.

Customers can easily grab some to consume as they shop which they might not have done otherwise.

Large stores also place banks closer to the entrance. This makes it easier for customers to withdraw money to be used in the store. Apart from discounted items, new products or products that are in high demand during a specific season are placed at the end of the isles.

Candy, magazines and other products that can be bought on impulse are usually placed near the registers so that customers can pick them as they wait and they won’t have enough time to change their minds.

2. The departments around the perimeter

Bakeries are usually placed beyond the entrance. The fresh baking smell usually triggers hunger pangs and will most likely lead to shoppers buying more food items. I even know of 1 chain that has a special air conditioning system to pipe the smells from the bakery to the front of the store so it hits you the moment you walk in.

Deli and coffee bars are usually located closer to the bakeries in one of the corners. Free cooking demonstrations and samples of free products are usually placed on one side of the walls on the outside.

3. The center of the store

Other household merchandise such as cooking ingredients and canned foods are usually placed in the center aisles.

The back walls usually have staples like eggs, meat, and dairy products. By the time the customers get to the middle and the back shelves, they will have seen other non-essential items along the way and probably bought them.

What is the psychology behind retail store layouts?

Most grocery stores place products that bring in the most profit at the eye level. By placing the profitable products within easy reach, they increase the frequency they are bought and profits.

Since most customers go to the grocery store in a hurry, they’ll end up picking the products their eyes first come in contact with. They will not have time to look around as they try to compare brands and prices.

Placing the expensive items at the end of the aisle is another layout that grocery stores use.

This also attracts shoppers who are in a hurry and therefore don’t have time to compare prices. They just pick the closest products even if they are not the cheapest option available.

Here are some of the other psychological reasons to rearrange a store:

1. Color Breaks

Color breaks are another key component of good grocery store merchandising.

By that I mean if you have 2 items that come in a red box, and 1 that comes in a blue box, you WILL sell more of all of them if you put the blue box in between the 2 red ones.

That makes all of them stand out better. It also eliminates the possibility of the customer seeing 1 red one but accidentally grabbing the other one (and later returning it).

2. Products that appeal to the senses

The stores also put out visually appealing items like flowers at the front of the store where you can easily see them.

Since flowers also smell great, they give customers the idea that the store has fresh products. Most people associate the smell of flowers with freshness and they may even end up buying the flowers.

3. Proven ways to drive customers through the store to the back

Other items you buy like milk are usually placed at the back.

This is because milk is an essential product that most people need and will have to buy no matter where it is placed. As the customer tries to get to the milk, they’ll have to pass other products that they could end up buying on impulse.

4. Put the banks up near the front to make sure they have plenty to spend

By putting the banks at the entrance, it ensures customers can do their banking first and have plenty of cash to do their shopping.

5. Give people a reason to hang out

By having a deli, bakery, and/or coffee shop in the corner, customers will not be in a hurry to finish their shopping and go get soothing to eat.

Instead, they’ll spend more time in the store. The more time spent in a store, the more people are apt to buy things. And they might even decide to pick up premade meals for dinner while they are there.

6. How stores pick which items go where on a shelf

The top shelf usually has products that have products from brands that aren’t very popular.

The shelves that are at your eye level are given to the best selling and/or most profitable products. These are products that are from reputable brands and can therefore easily attract attention. They aren’t necessarily the cheapest products but they still sell well because of the reputation of the brands.

The bottom shelves are usually reserved for very heavy or bulky products. That way a customer isn’t having to reach way up to grab a 10lb jug of cat litter or a huge container of laundry liquid.

How often do grocery stores change the layout?

Although there isn’t a specified frequency that retailers follow when rearranging the store, most of them reshuffle a little bit every few months.

But what they call endcaps, the displays at the end of each aisle, often change every 2 weeks or so.

For huge store-wide changes, once a year is not uncommon, while some retailers might rearrange twice every year. There isn’t a set pattern for how often they change. But in a hotly competitive town, you might notice they do it more frequently since they are trying to win a larger share of the grocery sales in the town.

Sometimes rearranging is done at the request of the product vendors.

Believe it or not, many large vendors these days pay the stores what’s called a slotting fee. In other words, they pay the store (a lot of money in some cases) to get good placement in a store for their products.

Good old fashioned quid pro quo.

Some vendors may want the store to place their products at a location that they consider to be premium. In such a case, the store may be forced (by their slotting fee agreement) to make the changes immediately. And yes, that’s even if it’s just a few days after they made their last reset.

Lastly, stores, of course, want to rearrange the store depending on the season.

No one wants to see a huge pumpkin patch out front in June or tons of watermelon in January. Different products are seasonal which means that they’ll sell more in some seasons than others.

So you can bet as we prepare for a new season, big changes are coming to your grocery store’s aisles.

Final Thoughts

Reshuffling the products occasionally is a good way to keep a store fresh and interesting.

But it also helps stores maximize profits by having higher-margin items in better positions. It can also be used to help sell through items about to expire.

But mostly, it’s about getting customers to go down every aisle. That way, while searching for what they came for, they’ll probably buy additional items along the way.

There’s actually a lot more that goes into how a grocery store decides how to build displays and merchandize their store. I cover all of that strategy in a recent article where I break down grocery merchandising.

I even get into some of the secret strategies of how they can build huge displays without using a ton of product (which ties up their cash flow).

Just click the link to read it on my site.

How to Build a Grocery Display – Merchandising that Sells!

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They might seem simple enough, but great displays can make or break a grocery store. So learning how to build a grocery display is one of the first things successful grocery store managers need to learn.

A great grocery display has 2-3 products that are likely to be purchased together. It needs to look abundant, with contrasting colors and textures between the items. It also needs to have some depth and height to it, but not contain so much product as to tie up too much money or take months to sell through everything.

But there’s a lot more to know about grocery merchandising and displays. So here, we’re getting into the how and why of grocery store merchandising and displays. We’ll talk about how a display needs to look in order to sell product and the psychology behind it you need to be aware of.

Specifically, though, we’re walking through exactly how to build a grocery display.

Let’s get going!

What is a merchandise display?

A merchandise display is any type of display in a retail store in addition to the regular aisles and shelves. That could be any an endcap display, a free-standing display in the middle of the store, displays outside the store near the entrances, or smaller displays near the check stands.

Unlike the regular aisles in your store, these displays are designed to draw special attention.

In many cases, they are temporary displays that change out every few weeks, or perhaps seasonally. So they aren’t intended as year-round displays.

In that sense, this works great for products you buy on a discount.

That way you can build a big display and pass some (or all) of that discount on to the customers in the hopes of doubling or tripling the sales of that product(s) over what you might sell normally.

Do I need a lot of product to build a grocery display?

In some cases, yes. There are ways around having a ton of product and we’ll get more into that below. But displays work best when they at least look abundant.

Think about it this way.

When you go to a store to buy a product, normally the shelf would be full of that product. But sometimes we get there and there’s just 1 left. Often, from a psychological standpoint, we feel unsure about buying it when there’s just one left.

There’s just something inherently wired into our brains to not want to buy something that’s not abundant in quantity. It’s not logical, it’s intuitive. We might feel like it’s old, or it’s the one that no one else wanted.

Displays need to be the same way; it needs to look full of product. Abundant, fresh, and colorful. That also means it will need to be maintained throughout the day and during the entire promotion; it’s not set it and forget it.

How much product do you need to build a display?

Of course, that varies a lot depending on if you are building your display on a fixture, or just stacking cases on the floor. Generally speaking, these days, most smart retailers use fixtures or shelving to build displays.

That way it’s much easier to make a display look abundant without investing a ton of money into product that (in some cases) might take weeks or months to sell. It also makes it much easier to keep the display looking good throughout the promotion.

Here’s a good example of how NOT to build a display.

I took this picture in a Whole Foods store some years back.

There is a theme here (low-carb), but there are soy tortilla chips, 3 different kinds of bread, breakfast cereal, and some sort of (presumably low-carb) cookbook.

It’s a jumbled mess.

Yes, whoever built it probably thought people on a low-carb diet (Atkins was the flavor of the day back then) might want all those items.

But it isn’t cohesive. None of those things really go together and low-carb is the only common denominator.

A more focused approach would have been to have the chips with jars of salsa and maybe fresh avocados from produce. Or have the cereal along with aseptic containers of unsweetened almond milk.

In short, have fewer products that people will naturally want to buy together. Even on a low-carb diet, I may not be looking for 2 different kinds of bread, soy chips, and breakfast cereal.

How many different items should go on 1 display?

A display needs about 2-3 different products in total.  It’s OK to have different flavors of the same item but don’t have more than 3 completely different products on 1 display. 

So why 2-3?

If you only have 1 product, then you are forced to buy a LOT of that product from your distributor. If you misjudged the demand for that 1 product then it can take you a LONG time to sell through it.

Then you find yourself moving the display to different parts of the store so it looks fresh, but every time you touch a product, you lose money.

Let me repeat that; every time you touch a product, you lose money. Ideally, you want to build it, sell it, and then order something new when it’s gone.

But too many products and the display lose focuses and gets junky.

The related part is hugely important too.

Every day in stores I see displays that make NO sense. I see boxes of pasta, not with jars of pasta sauce or bottles of wine or even non-refrigerated containers of parmesan cheese, but things like jarred pickles.

In short, it’s grocers putting up displays of whatever they happen to have the most of in the back room, thinking they are being smart by getting the products out on the floor, but then wondering why 2 weeks later it didn’t sell.

It makes NO sense.

You want to motivate your customers, not through words, but intuitively, to buy everything on your display. If I see a brand of pasta I like, I might buy it if it’s on sale. But I’m VERY unlikely to buy a jar of pickles next to it, no matter how deep the discount it.

I would, however, buy a jar of pasta sauce and a bottle of wine (and if those auxillary products aren’t on sale, it helps your margins!)

How to build a grocery display without a lot of product

Sometimes, either for budget reasons or just quantity on hand, we find ourselves needing to build a display without a ton of product.

So there are a few good tricks to know when you’re wanting to look abundant without actually being abundant.

Sometimes I find this easier building displays with cardboard cases of products.

The reason for that is I can take 8 (cases are often 12 of something) out of a case, leaving 4 to provide structural support. If I have 12 cases of something, doing that method, and free stacking the individual boxes, I can easily make that look like 36 cases, or something close to it.

On a wooden fixture, you could also dedicate a shelf to demo samples of the product or stacks of coupons for the product or other product information or literature your customers might be interested in.

The picture above is a Valentine’s display I took a picture of in an Atlanta Whole Foods in 2005.

It might look like a TON of product. But in actuality, those champagne cases only have 4 bottles each in them and the cases of truffles are empty and all the individual boxes are just stacked loosely on top.

It’s a giant freestanding display that is really made with a fairly small amount of product. It makes a statement without tying up a huge amount of money in inventory.

What are the 4 elements of visual merchandising?

While you will have signs up on your displays, and on some occasions have an employee sampling the products, the display itself needs to tell a story. You tell that story by combining different elements of visual marketing.

Here are the 4 elements of visual marketing:

  1. Color (you must have color breaks to make product delineations clear)
  2. Touch and feel (different packaging provides needed contrast too)
  3. How the products related to each other (they must make sense together)
  4. The size and shape of the display (it deeps depth and height)

Visual merchandising is more than just the products. You have to think not only about what products go good together, but you also have to think about how they look side by side or above or below.

Bananas and blueberries look good together because of the contrast of both color and shape. Red bags of tortilla chips wouldn’t look good with red jars of salsa because of the lack of contrast in the color.

Check out this handy infographic which goes more in-depth into these concepts.

Why do grocery stores rearrange everything?

In short, times change, trends change, products change. Grocery stores (and retailers in general) need to keep up with the times or be left behind.

In the world of non-dairy milk, for instance, in 1990, soy milk was all the rage. I’m guessing that’s now the slowest seller, way behind almond milk and coconut milk.

If stores still had huge displays of soy milk, customers would flee to their competitors.

The other big reason to do what retailers refer to as a reset is to keep things fresh, and yes; to keep customers guessing and (more importantly) walking every aisle rather than cherrypicking down a shopping list.

When customers (like me) cherry-pick specific items and don’t go up and down every aisle, they don’t often run across as many impulse purchases as they would otherwise.

Finding ways to get customers to add unintended items to their purchase builds sales and what’s called basket size (the average amount per shop customers spend).

That’s why grocery stores change stuff around in a major way a couple of times a year.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we took a look at the world of grocery store displays.

We examined why grocery stores have displays. But we also looked at what to do if you don’t have a lot of product or a small budget to order product. We also looked at the psychology behind a good display to see why some sell tons of products while others collect dust.

Ultimately, we broke down EXACTLY how to build a grocery display. That way your store can sell more, help more people, and make your business more successful.

How have you been building your displays?

All pictures taken in Whole Foods were taken by me