There are three unavoidable things in life: mortality, tariffs, and groceries.
And since even immortality and tax evaders need to buy edibles it is nearly impossible to avoid regular visits to supermarkets to purchase groceries.
Whether you love it or hate it, grocery shopping is one those unavoidable shores.
In Pakistan, the trend of supermarkets is thriving especially in metropolitan cities like Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad.
Some retail giants set the precedent of large physical stores and successfully morph the consumer perception into brands that rest of them are following.
These supermarkets have an army of scanning and sales personnel ready to cater the flocking customers at the checkout lanes.
In addition, these weekly and monthly grocery trips come with an unexpected costs and risks.
Mulling over the below-mentioned facts we have rounded up here can take your mind off the wait next time you are waiting in a long queue of the checkout counter.
1: The size of your cart
Over the years the size of store’s shopping cart has doubled in the size. This lead to shoppers to buy more items.
The study suggests that by increasing the size of the shopping cart, stores are able to develop a consumption norm consistent with the scale of the cart.
It is considered as a psychological tactic to put customers into thinking that they can buy a few more items easily and eventually end up buying more than they intended without even realizing.
2: An average shopping time is more than it should be
Often heard time is money. Grocery shopping is one of those tasks that requires a better time management.
But we all end up spending more time than we should whether it’s a weekday or a weekend trip.
According to Time Use Institute, on average, we spend approximately 43 minutes per visit not including the time spent on getting to and from the supermarkets.
This means grocery shopping consumes roughly 53 hours per year.
3: Inflicted shopping carts
It’s not like anybody believes their shopping carts are clean. Supermarkets shopping carts are one of the dirtiest things.
According to a study, half of shopping carts found e-coli while more than 70% contained coliform bacteria. In extreme cases, these bacterias can cause diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting.
Next time make sure you wipe your cart thoroughly or use a hand sanitizer to avoid germs affecting you or your kids.
4: Weekend discounts and budget
Most of the people prefer Saturday and Sunday to buy groceries. The time of the week when you see a larger crowd in supermarkets than the rest of the days.
This means you are likely to spend an average 7 minutes more in the store.
This also increases the chance of spending money on unhealthy food especially when there are cookies and pastries staring at you in the face!
And it becomes even harder to stay within the budget when you are shopping with kids.
5: Impulse Buying
One of the biggest cons of going to the supermarket is impulse buying. The items at the checkout counters are placed strategically to trigger the impulse buying behavior.
Not only off-the-list grocery items increase your grocery bill, they can go to waste because you don’t have the plan to use them.
The purchasing of higher calories items can also go to ‘waist’ if you opt to visit store empty tummy.
So, How do I avoid the grocery store?
Grocery shopping is one life’s necessary evil. It consumes your time and money, but it also fills up your fridge and kitchen cabinets.
To avoid the pain of driving down to the supermarkets and walking the long aisles, you can simply remove some of that stress from your life through online grocery shopping.
We have also sorted these 5 Unique Tips and Tricks To Save Money on Online Shopping to reduce over-expenditure.
