Five tricks from the supermarket playbook to make you buy more

You ducked into the shop for milk. You walked out with a basket full of products you didn’t plan to buy – chips, chocolates, sugary cereal. Sound familiar?

Phillip Baker and The Conversation Digital Storytelling Team

You already know supermarkets are carefully engineered environments designed to commandeer our attention, exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities, and increase impulse spending – often without us realising it in the moment. Sort of like casinos.

Our team has spent years documenting how the industry meticulously gathers and analyses data on all of us, to craft strategies to make us buy more and eat more.

Here are five tactics from their playbook.

Let's go on an imaginary dash to the supermarket. The first aisle you walk down is full of cereals. Sugary cereals. About 65-70% of packaged foods on supermarket shelves are ultra-processed.

Your youngest child's with you and of course they quickly spot the brightly-coloured packaging, some carrying their favourite sports star on the front.

You don’t have time for an argument, so you tell them they can pick one. They want three, you settle on two, and into the basket they go – just so you can get back on track in search of your milk.

High-margin products are placed at adult eye level, and cheaper alternatives lower down. For children, products like confectionery and sugary cereals are often positioned at their height.

This is intended to generate what food marketing experts call pester power. It's reinforced when products carry child-directed marketing like cartoon characters, which is still legal in Australia, but not elsewhere.

Now where's that milk?

Let's zoom out. There's the milk, right at the back of the store, near some other staples like eggs. The layout of this imaginary store is based on a pretty typical supermarket in Melbourne's north.

To get to that milk, you will likely pass shelves of chocolates, lollies and sugary drinks (also often found at end-of-aisle promotions), as well as processed meats such as ham and bacon (which decades of research tell us increase cancer risk).

This is no accident. While many supermarkets place fruit, vegetables and fresh food sections near the entrance (which is good), they often put staples like milk, bread and eggs at the back. This aisle management forces us to walk further, exposing us to many other products and promotions. Meaning we buy more.

So, on the way to get that milk you pop some bacon, chocolate, and biccies in your basket.

You finally get the milk, now you’re heading past the frozen food section where potato gems are on sale.

You know they’re ultra-processed, high in salt and low in nutrition, but you’re only human; they’re delicious and it seems like a good deal. Fine. Into the basket they go.

Promotions framed as discounts or “buy 2, get 1 free" reliably increase sales, even when the per-unit saving is negligible. This tactic exploits our tendency to perceive losses as psychologically more significant than equivalent gains. It creates a sense of missed opportunity if the deal isn’t taken.

Waiting in line at the till, you notice that at least the cereal your child's picked seems healthy.

Front-of-pack claims like "high-fibre", "natural", "high protein" or "ethically sourced" trigger halo effects. Foods marketed for infants and toddlers, for example, carry up to seven claims on average.

These trick us into focussing on the positive attributes, and to overlook negative ones, including nutrition panels and ingredients lists that tell us the product is ultra-processed, often with high levels of sugar, salt and additives.

It’s a classic tactic used by food manufacturers. These halos are being reinforced by high health star ratings on many ultra-processed products. This stands in stark contrast to warning labels, adopted in at least ten other countries, that effectively shift consumers away from unhealthy products.

You’re loading your stuff – which now includes not just the milk but also a range of things you never intended to buy – onto the conveyor belt and you spot a chocolate bar. Look, you’ve earned it. And a refreshing can of fizzy drink too. After dealing with the shop, the negotiation with your kid, and everything else in your day, resistance feels futile.

On this imaginary shopping trip we’ve already made dozens of decisions by the time we reach the checkout. This state of decision fatigue reduces our capacity for self-regulation. Companies know how to exploit this vulnerability.

Checkout zones are strategically stocked with small, high-margin and ready-to-consume products like confectionery, soft drinks and impulse snacks. This is calculated to intercept us at our most vulnerable moment in the shop.

Again, an occasional treat will do no harm – but these product placement decisions by the supermarkets aim to turn what started as a treat into a routine part of your shop.

That milk you came for now sits alongside some biscuits, high-protein (and high-sugar) cereal and the bargain potato gems. A $3.40 shop suddenly cost you $58.85.

These tactics are all about milking you for as much money as possible.

Supermarkets operate on thin margins overall, but generate super-sized profits through high-volume turnover. For manufacturers, ultra-processed foods are the highest-margin products.

So it's in their financial interests for us to buy more of them. And, of course, it's in the food companies' interests too. Manufacturers pay the supermarkets for the best shelf placement, sales, and end-of-aisle promotions.

How do they know what works? Retailers are constantly analysing sales, supply chain and loyalty card data, to refine their strategies. New surveillance and real-time pricing technology, if rolled-out, could mean even more powerful manipulation tactics.

In Australia, the federal government could require retailers to use these same tactics to promote fruit, vegetables and other foods that make up a healthy diet. They could design policy to remove ultra-processed products from checkout zones and ban placements at children’s eye-level. They could restrict product labels and claims and scrap dodgy star ratings.

They could, but they probably won't, because the supermarkets and food manufacturers exert a lot of political pressure.

They're huge employers, a significant part of the Australian economy, and major political donors. They employ well-connected lobbyists, like former politicians and senior public servants. They also position themselves as part of the solution to the health harms their products cause.

What can we do to change the system? We can call on government, including our local members of parliament, to take meaningful action on excessive corporate power. We can join and support advocacy groups calling for change. We can be better informed and more wary of these strategies when we shop. And we can keep learning and asking questions.

And for those of us with the option, we can decide where we spend our money. Your local green grocer, butcher or fresh food market is far less likely to be watching, tracking and influencing your weekly shop.

Author: Phillip Baker, ARC Future Fellow and Sydney Horizon Fellow, School of Public Health, University of Sydney. Phillip Baker currently receives funding from the University of Sydney, Australian Research Council, and Macdoch Foundation. He is a member of the provisional WHO Guideline Development Group for ultra-processed foods. He has received funding from UNICEF, including as co-author of the report Ultra-processed Foods and Children. He co-led the 2025 Lancet Series on Ultra-processed Foods, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence.