Shoppers are significantly more likely to buy alcohol and fizzy drinks if they are displayed at the end of supermarket aisles, research has found.
The drinks do not even have to be on special offer for people to buy much more than they normally would, according to experts working out of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit, based at the University of Cambridge.
They looked at the sales and shop layout for one major supermarket shop over the course of a year.
This included shelf space, price, price promotion and weekly sales volumes for three types of alcohol (beer, wine and spirits) and three non-alcoholic drinks (fizzy drinks, coffee and tea).
Even when factoring in price, end-of-aisle displays increased sales of beer by 23%, 34% for wine and 46% for spirits. Fizzy drink sales also went up 52%, while the figure was 74% for coffee and 114% for tea.
When lower prices were taken into account, the biggest impact was on increasing alcohol sales.
For every 1% cut in the price of alcohol, there was around a 5% rise in sales volume.
Lower prices had less of an impact on the sale of non-alcoholic drinks.
Writing in the journal Social Sciences and Medicine, the researchers said: "End-of-aisle displays appear to have a large impact on sales of alcohol and non-alcoholic beverages.
"Restricting the use of aisle ends for alcohol and other less healthy products might be a promising option to encourage healthier in-store purchases, without affecting availability or cost of products."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article