Why Supermarkets Are Designed to Get You Lost?

You went in for milk. You came out with $86 of stuff. Here's the hidden logic behind supermarket design: the half-myth of milk at the back, the decompression zone and the 'invariant right', the racetrack that tracking tags revealed, the shelf space brands pay for, the music experiments, the cart nobody wanted, and the architect who apologised for the mall. Plus five simple moves that beat the building. Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:40 The Milk Myth 1:43 The First Ten Seconds 2:38 The Racetrack 3:23 The Shelf Is for Sale 4:30 The Sound of Spending 5:41 The Cart Nobody Wanted 6:43 The Man Who Apologized 7:30 Beat the Building Sources: • Planet Money / Jayson Lusk — Why is the milk at the back of the store? (Pollan vs Roberts, French UHT milk) — https://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/9/24... • Paco Underhill, Why We Buy (decompression zone, invariant right) — summary — https://apexdisplay.com.au/the-theori... • Wharton (Larson, Bradlow & Fader) — tracking supermarket shoppers with RFID (PathTracker) — https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/a... • FTC (2003) — The Use of Slotting Allowances in the Retail Grocery Industry — https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/... • UK Government — HFSS placement restrictions (in force 1 Oct 2022) — https://www.gov.uk/government/publica... • Milliman (1982), Journal of Marketing — background music tempo and supermarket shoppers — https://retaildesignlab.be/en/speed-m... • North, Hargreaves & McKendrick (1997), Nature — In-store music affects product choice — https://www.nature.com/articles/36484 • Smithsonian — Sylvan Goldman and the first shopping cart (1937) — https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor... • 99% Invisible — The Gruen Effect (transcript) — https://99percentinvisible.org/episod...