
How Whole Foods "Primes" You to Shop - timf
http://www.fastcompany.com/1779611/priming-whole-foods-derren-brown
======
colanderman
_Not only do the prices stay fixed, but what might look like chalk on the
board is actually indelible; the signs have been mass-produced in a factory._

I've eaten at so many restaurants that have written signs in chalk and _left
them the same for months_ that I _assume_ those signs are months old. I've
never been in a WF or Trader Joe's (which has the same practice) and thought
"huhn, good price today"; rather I think "ah, they're on sale this week."

 _Ever notice that there's ice everywhere in this store? Why? Does hummus
really need to be kept so cold? What about cucumber-and-yogurt dip? No and
no._

 _What??_ YES and YES... hummus is BEANS and beans go bad quickly even when
cold. And yogurt is dairy _that's already started to go bad_.

 _Similarly, for years now supermarkets have been sprinkling select vegetables
with regular drops of water--a trend that began in Denmark. Why?_

Because leafy greens DRY OUT in drafty or warm environments. Yes water makes
them rot, but the alternative is dry, wilted spinach.

 _Believe it or not, my research found that while it may look fresh, the
average apple you see in the supermarket is actually 14 months old._

Yes, apples are kept in environmentally-controlled chambers so they can be
sold all year. Of course if you buy an apple in March it's not fresh. _What
does this have to do with priming?_

~~~
cellularmitosis
There's an episode of Modern Marvels which shows the "banana room" at a
national distribution center for a grocery chain. They have a gigantic
environmentally controlled room where they can delay how quickly a banana
becomes ripe. It's the classic "big bucket being filled by a hose at rate X
and being drained at rate Y" highschool physics problem, implemented using
bananas :)

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duopixel
It's shameful to find this kind of pseudo-science on the front page of HN.
Most of the article details plain old communication at work, but the author
chose to paint it under dark intentions.

If a salesman chooses to put on a suit, cologne and an expensive watch, he's
being professional about his job. He wants to communicate value. According to
the author, this salesman would wear luxury objects to make me feel inferior
and that I might attain his social status by buying his products.

~~~
Groxx
That's not an argument against it, though. You're claiming cause-effect on
luxury and professional / communicating value, but that's not something you
can really prove because it's bound up in the historical significance of that
_kind_ of professionalism.

If anything (and potentially toned-down for realism), the author is probably
claiming that people do that _because it works_ , and they're offering a
different reason for why it does than you are.

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ggchappell
A question for you all:

I've seen the Derren Brown video[1] mentioned at the beginning of this
article. But I'm wondering whether it is "real". For example, there must be a
cameraman in the car on the trip, and he deliberately films the supposed
subliminal cues. Are we expected to believe that the people in the car did not
notice this? And there are other carefully positioned cameramen on the route
the car takes. Etc. I think it likely that the video is a setup -- or at least
a very poorly designed experiment.

I realize that this article is really about Whole Foods and their marketing
strategy. Still, the article spends three paragraphs talking about Brown's
"trick", implying that it is solid evidence of an surprising and significant
phenomenon.

And now the question: What you do think? Also, does anyone have more concrete
evidence on trustworthiness of the Brown video?

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg>

~~~
duopixel
Assuming the episode was completely real, I'd argue that he set up a creative
problem that had only one posible solution. Ask any creative professional how
he would make taxidermy tasteful for the general public and he will likely
have to recur to heaven, as death has no other upside. Heaven, being an
abstract concept, only has a couple of physical references: gates, angels,
clouds. And if an eight foot bear is subliminal priming, I'll be damned.

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ars
This article does not demonstrate priming, just marketing. Priming would imply
that what I saw in the front makes me shop in the back. But all the examples
listed are to make me buy the item being displayed, not a different item.

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shawnee_
_And as for apples? Believe it or not, my research found that while it may
look fresh, the average apple you see in the supermarket is actually 14 months
old._

I'd believe 4 months. Maybe 8. But 14 as the _average_? That would mean apples
more than 14 months old just as likely as those less than 14 months old.
Something about this statistic seems off.

~~~
joezydeco
I've gotta wonder if he meant 1.4 months. In this economy, nobody would keep
14 months of product in inventory and hope that there's a buyer for it down
the road.

The bananas I buy here in the US are flown in from South America in under 48
hours. I can get tulips from Holland in less than that. The apples number
makes no sense.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So noone would buy up a lot of the stock of a particular product to
artificially inflate prices?

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10682433>

~~~
joezydeco
Nobody would _ever_ do that.

[http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/goldmans-
sec...](http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/goldmans-secret-cash-
cow-detroit-warehouses-full-metal/40525/)

But hoarding a perpetually renewable, perishable product? Doesn't seem likely.

~~~
Despite
Of course apples are kept for long times. 14 months seems iffy, but in order
to sell apples all year round, you have to store them for many months. Most
produce is sold this way, but apples are particularly good for storage. You
can store apples in cardboard in a cool dry room of your own house for months.

~~~
yardie
Most produce is not sold this way. It is staggered by hemisphere to take
advantage of the seasons. You'll get North American apples in the fall and
south american apples during the spring. You may be able to store apples for a
few weeks and possible a few months for heartier lines. But every minute it's
not sold is money being lost in storage or wastage.

------
schiptsov
Someone pays money for such primitive writings? May be I can get some part-
time job? ^_^

One who wants to learn how to sell fruits or vegetables should visit some big
Asian bazar (local word for a marketplace) and take a look. Most of sellers
are gurus of merchandising, which in this context means how to place fruits,
which ones to put together, which ones to put aside, which ones in customer's
reach, which one only to display, aren't some kind of WF innovations, but
quite old ideas. And instead of flowers they put fresh tiny branches with
leafs, as if they were accidentally cut in harvesting. And of course, the
ideas about showing boxes, as if it was just fresh delivery, or putting drops
of water on fruits, or making a fresh cuts, giving you some fruit to touch or
to smell, and so on. The best markets I have seen was inside and around
Kashmir valley, and, of course, street vendors in Nepal's capital Kathmandu.
So, this article is something like, I don't know, an amateur take to the
subject. ^_^

And all that Whole Foods thing is just for people who know no better. Fresh
means when it comes morning time directly from a tree or from a field by
people who brought stuff to sellers.))

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molo_
This article could really do with some photographs. I don't think the local
Whole Foods by us does some of these things.

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dcburnett
Why was the only image in this article a picture of a female track race?
Unless his book is published by Nike, I think the author/FastCompany missed
the boat on priming us with an actually relevant symbolic!

~~~
Tichy
Why, you intuitively know that it is an article written by winners for
winners. So if you want to win, buy the book.

------
Groxx
They just described every large grocery store I've been to in the past few
years. Hardly Whole Foods specific, and highly debatable anyway - I prefer all
the ice, because normally that hummus or yogurt is a good deal warmer when I
buy it than when it comes out of my fridge. And it'll likely sit there for
quite a while before I come to buy it. And it has to survive the trip home. I
prefer as much buffer-zone as I can get.

Ironically, though I've heard it referred to as "whole paycheck", many of the
things I've been buying elsewhere I've found _cheaper_ at Whole Foods - good
kefir, for instance. Elsewhere things like that are oddball luxury items that
they mark up considerably more while they have them, and get rid of when they
don't sell as well. _That_ is why I keep going back.

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alanfalcon
Penn and Teller aren't fooled.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfGybFz6GRY>

All the "suggestion" stuff is called out around 7:30, but you may as well
watch the whole clip to see what's being discussed.

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notintokyo
Am I the only one really skeptical about that Derren Brown video? I think the
real deal with that video is that it is just completely made up entertainment
for the viewers, not an actual documentary of something that happened. That,
or there is something not shown in it.

It seems rather unlikely to me that a few cues placed would make someone's
behavior that predictable. What about the lifetime of other cues they have to
draw from, or even just simple random whims that can influence the outcome?

~~~
baddox
I think it's pretty clear that either the video is staged, or they had to try
tons of times to get some marketers to produce those results. Derren Brown
generally admits that he uses sleight of hand to fake astonishing results, so
even that is a possibility with this video.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I can't cite an example but I'm pretty sure he claims that he never "fakes"
anything. But saying that he does use regular magic mixed with mentalism to
great effect.

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mathattack
Every successful store does this. And most successful websites too. Groceries
are a low margin business so any price raising idea gets copied over and over.
Retailers and consumer products computers are leaders in data mining to test,
measure and retest techniques.

That said... The Columbus Circle Whole Foods is awesone. Pricey but awesome
compared to other local options.

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shalmanese
Derren Brown has consistently been vocal than Neurolingistic Programming does
not work and every act he performs that seemingly involving NLP is actually
done via sleight of hand.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Do you have a citation to that effect. This seems contrary to what I've seen
of his shows (I was quite a fan in the past but haven't seen anything
recently).

