Psychology of Grocery Shopping

I went to Waldbaums today to get some grocery shopping done with my suite mates. Although we all have meal plans, we needed to stock up on random food we like to eat. We spent more than two hours in there looking for food. We ate at an Italian restaurant before hand and we still managed to stuff our cart until there was no space.

There is a reason for this. Supermarkets are really smart in marketing their products. For example, we usually go to the supermarket to get staple foods such as milk, eggs, cereal, etc. And apparently, surveys say that shoppers like to shop in the counter clockwise direction. This means that in the time for you to walk from the right side of the supermarket to the left side of the supermarket where the milk is, you are passing through a bajillion things and therefore you are buying a bajillion things.