Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
One of the reports from consumer research that has surprised me the most recently is: The way in which the handles of a shopping cart are attached apparently has an effect on consumer behavior.
The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported that scientists from the Innsbruck Institute for Strategic Management, Marketing and Tourism have discovered that supermarket customers shop less when they push their goods in shopping trolleys with a normal crossbar than when the handles are attached as with a wheelbarrow. In the study with more than 2000 supermarket customers, the changed handle attachment increased the desire to buy by 25 percent.
25 percent! Basically, all shopping carts would have to be converted immediately. Which industry already has the opportunity to increase its own sales by a quarter with a few simple modifications? The researchers justified the surge in consumption with the fact that a traditional shopping cart with a crossbar is pushed with the help of the triceps muscle. And that upper arm extensor is usually used for defensive movements. This means that when you push a shopping cart you get a sense of consumer disgust.
The longer you wander through the supermarket shelves, the sooner you want to escape the consumer world and dig for roots in the forest. It would be interesting to find out how many billions have fallen victim to the grocery retail trade in recent years because they were equipped with the wrong shopping cart.
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The shopping trolley was just invented in the USA in the 1930s to stimulate consumption. The customers no longer had to lug the goods, but could conveniently push them in front of them.
What would 25 percent more consumption look like?
Pushing the wheelbarrow, which stimulates the biceps, would be particularly important for the desire to buy. Because, according to the research group, when you use the biceps, the experience of consumption is more associated with “consumption and approach”. The heavier the wheelbarrow, the more you want to buy.
On the other hand: What would the people of the West look like if they consumed 25 percent more? Wouldn’t all human problems then be 25 percent more?
Presumably, Sylvan Goldman, inventor of the good old crossbar shopping cart, should be honored as the man who saved mankind from worse. At the same time, the question of why so few children are born in western countries seems to have been resolved. By pushing the stroller, the defensive attitude towards your own offspring grows.
Once you have pushed a child through life for a few years, you no longer feel like having another child. So if we want more babies, we have to put the kids in the wheelbarrow.
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