Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Grocery Store and Habitual Food

In my family, my mom usually is the one who goes the grocery store to refill the refrigerator. What our family buys the most is vegetables, fruits, grains and meat. Sometimes she goes to Chinatown to buy the fruits and vegetables as well. In a typical week, I eat around 20 different kinds of fruits and vegetables. But I do not really eat nuts or roots that much. For grains, our family only eats rice, oatmeal sometimes, and bread/cakes. Sometimes when I don't feel like eating, especially during the summer, I eat a lot of fruits to replace a lot of the meals. However, I mostly eat rice/noodles with some vegetables and meats. Twice a week, we have soup with bones of pigs/fish/chicken and some other Chinese herd. I don't think my family has a big difference in our daily diet, and the food is pretty repetitive depending on how it is cooked. I don't really have a favorite meal, I felt like I only enjoy the food the most when I am hungry. When I am hungry, most of the food could be my favorite. In my opinion, I am a picky person and I do not eat certain food such as tuna, balsam pear, pumpkin...etc. Other than certain food that I do not eat, the food that I like (pork, chicken, beef, green/red pepper, tomatoes, green onions...etc.), no matter how they are being cook, I will still like it. I do not dislike specific meals, but I do dislike certain types of vegetables and meat.
What I found out in the grocery store is that they organized the food in certain place. Such as the vegetables and fruits in a group, the grains, condiment, meat, beverages, frozen things, things in boxes. The way they "push" certain food/products to the consumers is either to put it in a place that is easily for people to see, or having a sign saying "on sale". For some food, like the vegetables and fruits, they will specially put them in a neat pile for people to choose. So the food will look nice and people will buy it. The labels on the products also matters, such as a picture of how it looks like in the box or the outcome of making the food, the ones that looks better compare to the other products will be the one that people will buy if they haven't try those food before. All these different kinds of methods that the grocery stores use often succeed in pushing the products to the customers.

1 comment:

DinLi said...

I agree with you on how supermarkets might ""push" certain food/products to the consumers." I think that it is a method of commercialism and very effective too. Offering sales actually benefits the company to a certain point, until the costumer becomes a common costumer of that brand then they will withdraw the sale. Of course the price has to remain lower than the competition.