Consumers Experience Loss of Self Control at the Checkout

Do consumers need to be protected from themselves at the checkout lane?

It’s not news to any observer of consumer behavior that there is often a stark difference between what people say and what they do. Forget all the talk about shopping lists and consumers limiting impulse purchases. It’s all, as Vice President Joe Biden would say, "Malarkey."

The latest proof is research published in the New England Journal of Medicine which found, not surprisingly, that although many Americans claim to be trying to lose weight, they often wind up purchasing candy or other calorie-laden items strategically merchandised at the checkout.

According to the study’s authors, Deborah A. Cohen, MD, of RAND Health in Santa Monica, and Susan H. Babey, PhD, of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, the placement of foods high in fat, salt and sugar in areas such as the checkout lead to impulse purchases.

"Because of this chain of causation, we would argue that the prominent placement of foods associated with chronic diseases should be treated as a risk factor for those diseases," the authors wrote. "And in light of the public health implications, steps should be taken to mitigate that risk."

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

Do you agree with the logic that “candy at the cash register” constitutes a risk factor for chronic diseases? Do retailers that purport to be interested in the health of their customers have an obligation to offer checkouts free of foods high in fat, salt, sugar, etc.?

Poll

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Mark Heckman
Mark Heckman
11 years ago

Many of the existing common brands that populate the checkout merchandisers are already making alternative plans as they feel that not only will the array of merchandise change at the checkout, but also the checkout itself will be begin to be phased out due to mobile and other alternative payments. Obviously, this will not happen overnight, but they are right to be forward thinking.

On the issue of the “obligation” of retailers, the first obligation retailers have is to their shareholders and employees in the way of economic viability. Placing “healthy” items at the checkout is wonderful and thoughtful provided these items sell with the same or better pace as the “nasty” stuff they replace. Retailers are pragmatists when it comes to product placement. If it sells and it is profitable, they will support it. Do not look for many retailers to become “altruistic merchandisers”!

Gene Hoffman
Gene Hoffman
11 years ago

Give me a break. Parents and adults have the prime responsibility for their own good and bad behavior, not the retailer or the government. Or have things changed while I applied some self-discipline and passed up buying a candy bar at the checkout yesterday?

Roger Saunders
Roger Saunders
11 years ago

No! No!

The nanny state that these two authors are promoting is ridiculous. What’s next? Let’s not put magazines with Hollywood starlets scantily dressed at the checkout counter? Don’t place Girl Scout Cookie offerings at the end of counters or in the entry area of the store? No more Little League baseball donations at checkout because someone’s son (or daughter) didn’t make the team? Do we ban all candy, salt, sugar, and fats?

Merchants are attempting to grow their revenues and margins by offering consumers items that they may choose to purchase. Consumers are willing to take personal responsibility for their lives. These authors should be willing accept the liberty that people want and value in their lives.

This is truly NUTS!!!

Ian Percy
Ian Percy
11 years ago

The problematic word is “obligation.” There’s no question that there are many dimensions of our society that are just sad if not pathetic. Obesity and political campaign spending to name two. The question is, who should step up and take control of factors that hurt and damage our economy, our bodies and the environment we live in?

Chinese-made costumes were just yanked because they have lead in them, so someone was “obligated” to do that. One company caused a meningitis emergency, but apparently no one was “obligated” to prevent that. We have no idea what big agra is doing to our food for the sake of profit but no “obligation” evident there either. The FDA feels “obliged” to jump all over health foods but tobacco is still sold freely, killing hundreds of thousands every year. And now we’re worried about candy at the checkout?

We live in one self-inflicted screwed up society made all the more distressing because there are just so many incredible possibilities. Some day we’ll discover the simple obligation to do what is right, true and good.

David Biernbaum
David Biernbaum
11 years ago

Candy at the cash register is an impulse buy, no doubt, and many consumers make unplanned purchases, no doubt, including candy and other harmful foods, no doubt! However, I do not beleive that retailers need to take full responsibility for what consumers buy at the check-stand.

Dr. Stephen Needel
Dr. Stephen Needel
11 years ago

Candy at the register does not cause obesity. Fat people buying candy at the register and eating it is one of many causes of obesity. Again, we live in America — the government has no business telling us what we can and cannot eat and retailers should have no obligation to do anything.

That said, a retailer (like my Kroger) could remove candy from the self-checkout line — you want to avoid the crap, check out yourself and save us some money. Or, they could make a big deal of having a register or two that is “stimulus free” — but they should make sure to put their slowest cashiers there.

Tom Redd
Tom Redd
11 years ago

No. This is backwards logic that says humans cannot think for themselves and determine what is right or wrong. I recently checked out of at a large grocery chain and watched in awe as a larger couple let their already LARGE son of about 5 or 6 years old pick out a small pile of candy while they were in line.

This was their choice. It is their life. No matter how healthy the retailer is, the shopper is in charge.

BTW, at some of the very healthy retail stores you can really get fat off the natural “treats.” It is all about control. The shopper has control over the retailer, so time for them to control themselves.

Bill Emerson
Bill Emerson
11 years ago

Retailers are in business to sell their customers what they want. There’s a reason candy is at checkout — it sells really well there.

Two questions. First, whatever happened to personal responsibility? Secondly, does anyone really believe that repositioning sweets on the sales floor is going to make people healthier? Really?

Cathy Hotka
Cathy Hotka
11 years ago

Replace Snickers and Mounds at checkout with broccoli and carrots? Please.

Citizens have to take responsibility for their own behavior. And after 45 minutes of tedious shopping, I’m not going to feel guilty about throwing a candy bar into my cart, and retailers shouldn’t feel guilty about putting it in front of me. What’s next — replacing the National Enquirer with Dickens?

Warren Thayer
Warren Thayer
11 years ago

So if you take it away from the checkstand, do you then take it away from end caps? How about taking it away from secondary displays? Or maybe off the shelves entirely? This is ludicrous. Candy has been at the checkout since I was a kid, way before the obesity epidemic. Fewer and fewer people take responsibility for their own actions anymore.

Steve Montgomery
Steve Montgomery
11 years ago

My responses in a sentence is — What happened to being responsible for one’s own actions?

David Livingston
David Livingston
11 years ago

Absolutely not. Our job as retailers is to separate as much money from customer’s pockets as we can by any legal means. Part of many retailer’s marketing is to claim they are interested in the health of their customers. Of course we really aren’t, but we have to say that because that’s what the customer wants to hear. We even put all these nutritional ratings on our candy cereals to make the customer think they are buying something healthy. Pretty much an entire supermarket is filled with nothing but foods high in fat, salt and sugar.

If all we sold where healthy foods we’d be down to just the produce department. Our job as a retailer is to tell the customer what they want to hear and sell them the food they want to eat. Then make it look like it’s their idea. If that means we pile candy up at the checkout, then so be it.

Raymond D. Jones
Raymond D. Jones
11 years ago

Is this another of Mayor Bloomberg’s ideas about regulating what we eat?

Several years ago, Dechert-Hampe did extensive studies of the consumer experience at the checkout and developed a set of best practices for merchandising. These were published to the industry under the Front-End Focus banner. Dozens of retailers participated and we did thousands of interviews at checkout.

Among the issues we were asked to address was the notion of “candy-free” lanes which several retailers had in their stores. We learned that, while there was a small, vocal group of shoppers who supported this, very few actually acted upon it. In fact, analysis showed that less than 2% of the shoppers selected the “candy-free” lane in the stores that had them.

On the other hand, over half of all shoppers bought candy at the checkout at least occasionally and confectionery sales represented nearly a third of total checkout sales for retailers.

It seems like this is both a non-issue and a no-brainer for retailers.

J. Peter Deeb
J. Peter Deeb
11 years ago

Let’s outlaw candy at Halloween because a few kids might overindulge. Remove the scandal sheet newspapers from magazine racks because someone might actually believe that XXXX (name the actress) was impregnated by an alien! Remove salt and sugar from all processed foods so that they taste bad and no one who has a weight problem will buy them!

What are we doing? Can’t the majority of people take responsibility for their actions? Maybe we should change the way we are raising and teaching our kids so that discipline is not a bad word anymore!

Ryan Mathews
Ryan Mathews
11 years ago

Well … it’s pretty hard to argue that placing high fat, high sugar, high salt impulse items doesn’t at least passively promote less than perfect health practices. It’s like arguing that selling pints of cheap, screw cap wine doesn’t encourage winos.

Ian is right though. The key word here is obligation. Individual consumers have an obligation to manage their own health and retailers have an obligation to turn a profit. At multiple points down the road these two obligations are likely to come into conflict.

Ian talks about doing the, “right thing,” and I agree except that that’s a bit like kicking the ethical can down the street. If obligation is tough to define, so is doing, “… what is right, true and good.”

Warren also raises a good point. If we have an ethical obligation at the POS, don’t we also have an ethical obligation throughout the store? Should we not sell certain items or … even more problematic … only sell certain items to certain customers?

It’s a slippery slope. I don’t buy into the Ayn Rand, “Every shopper for him or herself,” theory of retailing, but at some point we have to exercise the time honored principle of caveat emptor.

Now, if Ian’s vision were to be fulfilled, we would live in a society where demand for poor nutritional items declined and the market would take care of the rest.

Zel Bianco
Zel Bianco
11 years ago

Candy at the register might be a risk factor for chronic diseases, but does this mean that candy (or any other high risk food with high fat, salt, sugar, etc., should be relegated to a “high risk factor” aisle of the store with warning signs of the implications to consumers’ health posted everywhere? Consumers need to take responsibility for their actions and not put the responsibility on the retailers. The best remedy for retailers with concerns for their customers’ health should be educating them on healthy, smart purchases and perhaps adding health impulse purchases alongside the candy.

George Anderson
George Anderson
11 years ago

While I don’t want anyone messing with my access to chocolate and gum on my way out of the store, I’ll play devil’s advocate and point out that there is a growing body of scientific evidence that shows a detrimental connection between even small amounts of sugar and a variety of public health issues.

Research by the endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, for example, has compared brain scans of people consuming sugar with those who ingested cocaine. Dr. Lustig has said that you can’t tell one from the other. Following the logic path here: You don’t see too many calls for illegal drugs to be merchandised at the checkout.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
11 years ago

Although many retailers have responded to these concerns for years, I believe two thoughts need to be considered. 1) Retailers know that they should always consider the shoppers’ feelings about how their stores are merchandised. And, 2) Seriously?! We cannot protect ourselves from everything! When I drive by a new car dealership, all those signs for special pricing are certainly attractive. Maybe I’ll buy a car and sue the dealership for enticing me to go into debt.

Al McClain
Al McClain
11 years ago

Please go back and read the discussion questions. In answer to #1, yes, of course candy at the cash register is a risk factor. It’s there because it sells, and we all know candy is not a health food. In answer to #2, the question was whether “retailers that purport to be interested in the health of their customers have an obligation to offer….” The answer again is: Yes. Retailers in general have no such obligation, but when they go down the path of trying to help customers get healthier (or pretending to help according to DJL), then they should at least offer non-candy checkouts.

No one that I can see is suggesting the “big, bad government” get involved here, but it would be nice if retailers and corporations would take a look around and see how the “every person for him/her self approach is working, relative to obesity and so many other societal issues.

Charles P. Walsh
Charles P. Walsh
11 years ago

Welcome to the “visible hand” of the new “nanny state” in which they will manage the “chain of causation” through policies designed to protect our best interests and protect us from ourselves.

The scope is unending in this line of reasoning. All advertising and marketing are directed to consumers and designed to capture their attention wherever they are. Television at home, billboards on the road, POP in stores, advertising in subways, on buses, in airplanes, in bathrooms, as pop-ups online, and the examples go on and on. Where does one draw the line?

This increasingly intrusive line of reasoning is working its way into governmental policy in which it is defacto assumed that consumers must be protected from themselves via the control of the producers and their marketing.

Ludicrous.

Tony Orlando
Tony Orlando
11 years ago

Maybe I should never leave my house, as the icy roads in the winter could kill me, or the sunstorm going on will make me go blind. Give me a break, and let the people choose what they want to buy. Should casinos stop giving away free drinks, so we don’t gamble away our money? I offer healthy snacks all over the store, but nothing beats a good snickers bar when you’re hungry, so I proudly sell what the consumer chooses to buy.

Shaun Ryan
Shaun Ryan
11 years ago

There’s a solid body of evidence out there that shows people don’t make decisions rationally. Retailers take advantage of this to sell candy at the checkout. Are they exposing themselves to lawsuits from people impacted by obesity related diseases for contributing to those diseases, particularly if they are otherwise saying they are interested in the health of their customers? Could this potential for a lawsuit be the business justification for aligning their actions with their supposed ethics?

Roy White
Roy White
11 years ago

Retailers shouldn’t and probably won’t have an obligation to merchandise healthy foods at checkout (but who knows, you can’t have Big Gulps in NYC), but what an opportunity for a supermarket to help position itself as the destination for health and wellness. Whole Foods’s checkouts feature herbal medicines, energy drinks and an array of other healthy products. There are already candy free checkouts in many supers, and it might be better business in the long run to break candy/magazines paradigm that has been in place for so long.

Cynthia Sherman
Cynthia Sherman
11 years ago

There is only so much ‘regulation’ that should be imposed. If there were to be health advisory labels on candy akin to the ones on cigarettes, perhaps that’s a better route to go.

At some point, people have to be responsible and accountable for their actions and while I sympathize with the hardship of losing weight and maintaining sound health and nutritious options, simply eradicating the enticements at the checkout line will not solve their problem, which goes beyond a simple weakness to grab a bag of M&M’s as an impulse buy.

Jerry Gelsomino
Jerry Gelsomino
11 years ago

I have mixed feelings about this. While on one hand these items are bad temptations for anyone with a chronic disease who needs to stay away from this stuff, but at the same time, knowing how to merchandise the cashwrap is what merchants do best. My advice, if you can’t be trusted to withstand temptations from a Snickers bar, go to the checkout that features nail clippers and fake tatoos.

Kimyahta Hairston
Kimyahta Hairston
11 years ago

I believe that it has to do in part with the risk factor, but it’s bad on both ends because manufacturers depend on the product making money and on the other hand these strategies hurt the consumers on the health side of things. In part, removing those products can hurt the manufacturer financially.