The Psychology of Supermarkets: Why You Should Never Shop Hungry

Picture this: you walk into a supermarket with the intention of grabbing a few household items. An hour later, you emerge with an overflowing trolley, a noticeably lighter wallet, and a puzzled expression. If this scenario sounds familiar, you’ve experienced the subtle yet powerful world of supermarket psychology – a blend of behavioural economics, marketing strategy, and human bias that influences the choices we make, often without our conscious awareness.

Supermarkets are not simply large buildings full of food. Instead, they are meticulously designed environments that guide our decisions from the moment we step through the door. One of the most discussed ideas in behavioural economics, popularised by Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Thaler in his book ‘Nudge’, is choice architecture: the concept of structuring the environment in ways that influence our decisions in a predictable manner without restricting our freedom of choice. In the context of supermarkets, this means arranging products, displays, and even the store layout to gently steer customers towards certain items.

Take the entrance, for example. Many supermarkets strategically place the fruit and vegetable section, or even a salad bar, right at the start of a customer’s shopping journey. This isn’t a coincidence. Fresh produce, with its vibrant colours and perceived health benefits, sends a psychological signal of wholesomeness and good intentions. When shoppers begin with healthy purchases, it can create what’s known as the licensing effect: once we’ve put some apples and kale in the basket, we feel we’ve “earned” the right to add a bar of chocolate or a tub of ice cream later. At the same time, it sets a tone for the shopping ahead as you’re being nudged into thinking healthily, at least initially.

Then there’s the well-known retail saying: “Eye level is buy level.” Our attention naturally gravitates towards items placed directly in our line of sight. Supermarkets know this, and premium brands often pay for prime shelf real estate. This means that when you’re walking down an aisle, the products at eye level are likely the ones with the highest margins or the strongest brand deals, not necessarily the best value. Less profitable or store-brand alternatives are often placed higher up or near the floor, requiring a conscious effort to seek them out. Without realising it, our purchasing choices can be shaped as much by shelf placement as by price or quality.

These tactics often follow the EAST framework: a widely used behavioural design model that encourages actions by making them Easy, Attractive, Social, and Timely. In supermarkets, ‘Easy’ might mean placing best-selling products where they’re most visible and reachable. ‘Attractive’ could be achieved through bright packaging or limited-time offers. ‘Social’ comes into play when promotions highlight what most shoppers are buying and ‘Timely’ might involve placing ready-to-eat snacks near the checkout to capitalize on impulse purchases when our willpower is at its weakest.

And that brings us to the golden rule: never shop hungry. While the obvious reason is that hunger makes us more likely to buy food we don’t need, the psychology runs deeper. Hunger reduces our cognitive control, making us more susceptible to impulse purchases and less likely to evaluate prices or nutritional value. It also amplifies the desire for instant gratification, our tendency to overvalue immediate rewards like the satisfaction of eating a sugary snack right now over long-term benefits (like saving money or eating healthily). Behavioural psychologists often term this as short term or ‘myopic’ thinking. When you combine this reduced self-control with the supermarket’s carefully crafted choice architecture, the result is often an overfilled basket and a less-than-ideal grocery bill.

When we shop on an empty stomach, we also become more vulnerable to subtle psychological cues like priming and framing. Priming occurs when our senses are activated in ways that influence our behaviour, often without our awareness. For instance, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting from the in-store bakery doesn’t just make the environment more pleasant but actively stimulates our appetite, nudging us towards buying pastries or loaves that were never on the list. Our hunger heightens this effect, making it harder to resist sensory triggers that appeal to our cravings.

Framing, on the other hand, is all about how choices are presented. A deal such as “buy two, get one free” on chocolate bars or crisps seems like an irresistible bargain, especially when you’re hungry and your brain is fixated on immediate satisfaction. In reality, you’ve been framed into perceiving the deal as a gain, even if it leads you to spend more overall and take home more food than you intended. Combine these biases with the reduced self-control that hunger brings, and it becomes easy to see how a quick stop for dinner ingredients turns into a full-blown splurge. The solution, thankfully, is simple: eat before you shop. A full stomach arms you with the willpower to resist the supermarket’s most powerful nudges.

Ultimately, supermarkets (and other big corporations) excel at using behavioural economics to guide our choices – sometimes for our benefit, sometimes for theirs. Understanding these tactics can help us navigate the aisles more consciously, stick to our shopping lists, and resist the subtle nudges that turn a list for milk, bread and eggs into a trolley full of chips and chocolates. So next time, eat before you shop because your wallet and your waistline will thank you.