Grocery shopping - cherry pickers?

 
Excerpts from
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/business/media/10drill.html


Grocers loathe the shoppers known as "cherry-pickers" - people who
visit several stores on a single grocery run, choosing only the sale
items in each.

"I remember working with a grocery company, and the head buyer was
talking about cherry-pickers. He used terms like rape," said Edward
Fox, a professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University. "They
feel it's a violation of trust."

Cherry-pickers get better with experience. A family that cherry-picks
on 4.3% of its grocery runs, the median frequency, averages $11.93 in
savings per cherry-picking trip. But families that cherry-pick 20% of
the time save an average of $15.76.



--

I have lost friends - some by death,
others through sheer inability to cross the street.

...Virginia Woolf

 

Well that's pretty much the whole article.

Cherry-pickers are probably their own worst enemies.  First, they are saving
just a little over 10 bucks a shopping trip.  That sounds good, until you
remember that gasoline is about 3 bucks per gallon now.  Making several
extra stops will eat up much of your savings.  Then you have to consider how
much your time is worth.  (time is money, remember)  If it takes me more
than 15 minutes to make an extra stop (don't forget driving time), I have
saved absolutely nothing.

But the grocers who hate the cherry pickers need to stop and consider WHY
would people be motivated to do this in the first place?  The simple answer
is that there is no single grocery store that can handle an average family's
needs.  And it's not always about prices, either.  Our family could do most
of our grocery shopping at the wal-mart supercenter, but for three major
problems.  First, their meat is low-quality and WICKED EXPENSIVE.  Second,
their produce is worse than crap.  The Wal-Mart produce seems to be b-grade
stuff to begin with, but rotten by the time it reaches the retail display.
Third, their deli stuff is about twice as expensive as any other local
grocery store.  But if we go to any other major grocery retailer, everything
outside of the meat, produce and deli departments is about twice as
expensive as it would be at the wal-mart supercenter.  Plus, the wal-mart
supercenter has a *better selection* of certain items, and the non-wal-mart
supermarkets have a *better selection* of certain other items.

We don't cherry-pick, as we don't have time to do so.  But we've settled
into a routine, of sorts.  We go to a supermarket one week, and wal-mart
supercenter the next.  At the supermarket, we stock up on meat and produce,
to get us by the next couple of weeks.  At the wal-mart supercenter, we
stock up on just about everything BUT meat and produce, to get us by the
next couple of weeks.  -Dave

 

"a violation of trust???"  I could give a flying rats ass what grocers
think of me.  Wanna know what I think of them?

I think that some of their product pricing is usurious.  When I can
buy a box of mushrooms or a box of sprouts any day of the week at the
99 cent store for 99 cents - and the store still makes a profit, why
do they cost $2 or even $3 or more a box at a grocery store?  When
Coke and Pepsi are having price wars on bottled sugar water and the
average price now is half what is was three years ago, and the stores
still make a profit, what happened to all those excess profits from
past years?  When a small bottle of yeast costs $10, and 8 buns of
puffed air and white flour cost over a dollar, am I supposed to be
happy that I'm allowed to check and bag my own groceries to save the
stores money?  Oh thank you kind sirs.

Yeah, I really care that these folks think I am "raping" them and
violating their trust.  NOT!

I "cherry pick" every time I shop, and I cherry pick on prescription
drugs and vitamins as well.  I cherry pick when I buy a home or a car.
Whadda they think, that everyone is schtoopid?   It is called
"capitalism" and the only reason it continues to be the accepted form
of barter is that it works both ways.  The stores increasingly get to
screw the customers and the customers get to say "screw you too."
every once in a while.  Raise your prices too high and guess what -
people stop buying from you.  Lower your prices, increase your
customer service, or give customers what they want, and guess what -
you get more customers coming back for more.  Ain't it amazing?

How much do I save on grocery shopping by cherry picking, which, BTW,
I more accurately call power-shopping?  I save a _minimum_ of 25%, and
usually more.  Buy a 20 lb turkey for $20 and toss it in the oven and
properly process it and you have $50 worth of sliced turkey and a few
meals on top of that.  Buy 20 cans of tuna at 50 cents a can or 10
cans at a dollar per can?  Decisions, decisions.  I watch for the new
tricks that stores use to violate the trust of their customers, like
doubling the pricing on random items for a few weeks, so that can have
a 50% off sale.  When I do a major shopping, it is not unusual for me
to come back with over $200 worth of groceries that would have cost me
$300+ if I hadn't power shopped.  I don't pay taxes on the $100 I
saved.  I don't have to work excess hours to support companies that
fret that I'm "violating their trust" at the same time they are trying
to shaft me for as much as they can.  Maybe part of that $100 I save
can go for groceries when I retire, when tuna will be $5.00 a can.

 
hchickpea@hotmail.com wrote:

I agree with you 100%. If any trust has been violated it is that of the
shoppers who can't shop at one store because that store can't be
trusted. If you plan your trips to the cheaper places (frex I buy only
toilet paper at Walmart, so stock up) the gas isn't that bad.

I hate it when people use the word "rape" to imply a shocking sense of
violation. I'm sure the people using the word have never been raped or
they'd not be so loose with it. Let's put it this way, continuing the
analogy..... if they had a relationship with me in the first place,
then they could term  my shopping at other stores would be adultery. As
it is, there is no store that has managed to satisfy me well enough to
stop my promiscuity.

Viv

 

So lard is pork butt rape?