Martin Lindstrom recently introduced a new book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy. In the book, Lindstrom explores how supermarkets persuade customers to spend more on average shopping trips. Whole Foods, he claims, is the industry leader in using unconscious suggestions, or symbolism, to increase the customer’s perception of freshness at the store. Lindstrom says that retailers are the masters of seduction.
Some of the symbolic that Whole Foods uses include:
Fresh-cut flowers: Whole Foods positions its flowers at the store entrance. These flowers represent freshness; Whole Foods hopes that customers carry the connection of freshness throughout their shopping experience.
Chalk boards: Whole Foods uses chalk boards throughout the store to advertise prices and specials. In European marketplaces, vendors use chalk boards to show the prices of flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Whole Foods uses chalk boards to simulate the local market experience.
Pictures of fruit: Grocers use pictures of fresh fruit on their juice containers with hopes that customers will think of the juice as fresh off the vine rather than from concentrate.
Cardboard boxes- Rather than placing produce in traditional produce bins, Whole Foods uses cardboard boxes for that fresh-off-the-farm appeal.
Ice/ mistiness: Whole Foods covers certain foods in chipped ice to convey freshness and purity. Other grocers also sprinkle some vegetables with water to create the same effect.
Discussion Questions:
1. What merchandising “tricks” does Whole Foods employ to get people to buy more?
2. Which do you believe are most effective?
3. What merchandising techniques do other stores employ to encourage add-on sales?
Source: Tom Ryan, “Brandwashed at Whole Foods,” RetailWire, October 14, 2011.
Grewal Levy Marketing News 
These retailing gimmicks definitely work, especially for grocery stores such as Whole Foods. When people see moisture on fruits and vegetables it makes them feel that it is nice and ripe and juicy, thus causing them to want to buy it. In addition to having flowers in the forefront of stores, grocery stores often have their customers enter into the produce section first to give them the impression they are walking into a garden and everything else in the store is fresh as well. Wholefoods also uses cardboard boxes to display produce in and chalk boards to give customers the impression that they are in a market where everything is freshly harvested. In addition to the location and appeal of produce, grocery stores use sample stations to help market products as well. By having customers taste a combination of foods and having the products that went into the sample right at the station; grocery stores cause people to buy products that they normally wouldn’t have bought if it weren’t for the sample station. I think the samples, the moisture, and displaying the produce in cardboard boxes are probably the most effective retailing tricks for grocery stores. Other stores use gimmicks such as buy one get one half off to help boost sales and attract customers to their stores.