The supermarket game : Are you fooled by the marketing ?

• Acknowledging how do we choose what we consume
• Highlighting the main methods that brands use to convince us to by their products
• Raising awareness on the fallacy tricks that are used in any regular supermarket
• Getting knowledge on quality labels

Duration : 30 minutes / group

In order to carry out this activity, you will have to browse the shelves of a supermarket in the days leading up to it. You will have to select 3 different brands of a range of 8 to 12 consumer products of your choice from the shelves.

Each set of products should make participants aware of the marketing methods commonly used in food sales. We advice you to prior the most common items people are eating so that the participants can feel concerned and share their own experience.

A possible selection could be for example :

• Coffee : 1 fair-trade coffee from a basic brand, 1 locally-roasted coffee (but without any other label), 1 coffee from a well-known brand with a colorful and exotic packaging - all 3 for the same price.
• Orange juice : 1L of orange juice with pulp from the supermarket brand in recycled cardboard packaging (tetrapak), 75cL of organic orange juice in a plastic bottle, 1L of orange juice produced from concentrated juice in a glass bottle - the organic juice is a bit more expensive than the 2 others.
• Breakfast cereals : 1 pack from a famous brand, 1 pack of organic cereals from the shop's own brand, 1 pack of cereals with packaging detailing the brand's environmental commitments - all 3 for the same price.
• Chocolate spread : 1 “special offer” jar (25% more product) of a well-known brand, 1 “family size” jar of the same product, 1 small size jar of the same product - if you look at the prices in details, you can notice that the price per kilo of the “special offer jar” is higher than the regular “family size jar”.
• Canned tuna (190g) : 1 can of tuna with the “MSC” label, 1 can of tuna from artisanal fishing, 1 can of tuna without a label but whose packaging explicitly refers to a family and artisanal fishery - all 3 more or less for the same price.
• Canned corn (~285g) : 1 supermarket-branded can of corn with 3 labels: “GMO-free”, “no pesticide residues”, “no preservatives”, 1 can of organic corn in an aluminum can, 1 can of corn from a well-known brand in a glass package with an attractive label - all 3 for the same price.
• Wheat flour : 1 packet of flour from local agriculture, 1 packet of organic flour imported from a neighboring country, 1 packet of flour that has been voted as “best product of the year” in a recent consumer competition - the last one is a bit cheaper.
• Olive oil : 1L of Spanish olive oil from Spain olives cultivated in “a sustainable farm” from a regular supermarket in a glass bottle, 1L of Italian olive oil whose packaging refers to tradition and highlight the know-how of the brand (but if you look more deeply, you can see that the olives are coming “from EU and outside EU” and that it is not organic), 1L of Tunisian organic olive oil with the EU organic label.
• Chocolate bars : 1 organic and fair trade chocolate bar, 1 chocolate bar from a well-known brand with its own quality label, 1 chocolate bar from a world famous brand - the organic and fair trade chocolate bar is a bit more expensive than the 2 others.
• Toilet paper : 1 pack of 4 compact rolls (corresponding to 12 rolls) from recycled paper, 1 pack of 12 FSC labelled rolls from the supermarket's brand, 1 pack of 12 “really soft” rolls with 100% recycled packaging from a famous brand - all 3 more or less for the same price.

Just before the activity starts, set you shelves. Put your products in an attractive way and precise their prices as if you were in a real supermarket. Play with the codes as far as you'd like to create the proper atmosphere: display advertisements on the wall, play music (e.g. the Sims soundtrack in “Buy mode”), open a packet of tempting smelling industrial buns just before welcoming the participants into the room…

Invite participants to enter your supermarket by small group (3 to 5 persons maximum at a time). Ask them to select one item out of three for each product. They can create pairs or small teams for this task. Then, invite them to explain you their choice : Why did they choose this specific product and not the 2 others? What attracted them ? What did they pay attention to?

Encourage them to discuss their choices : Do the selection criteria of their counterparts make sense for them too? What would have been their own choices and criteria? What do they agree on? What are they doubtful about? What do they know about the different labels? Which marketing tricks do they recognize in this game?

As a conclusion, invite the participants to resume what they learnt from the exercise and how they intend to apply this knowledge back home.

• A range of everyday consumer products (at least 8 types), with 3 different brands per product.