I’ll Stop the World and Melt with You
I really screamed for ice cream these past few months in Washington, D.C.! Choosing ice cream as the subject for optical research and fieldwork was a sweet one. By paying attention to the location of the ice cream sections, the types of customers visiting the store and the section itself, the branding, and pricing, I learned a lot about ice cream’s place in a grocery store as well as what establishments will do to market certain items for the general population. In my five different field visits, I explored Whole Foods in Foggy Bottom, Trader Joe’s in West End, Foggy Bottom Grocery on the George Washington University campus, CVS Pharmacy in Foggy Bottom, and Gallery Market on GW’s campus. Although my research was inductive, there was a commonality that I retroactively focused on while visiting the five different stores: pricing and what it means for marketing.
Every store besides the CVS Pharmacy on E Street Northwest carried mostly pints of ice cream. I did not come across many larger sizes except when I ventured right off campus to CVS. There, I found reasonably priced tubs of ice cream for six dollars, the same price as the smaller pints. In the other stores, I only found pints that ranged from five to seven dollars each, a high number for the amount of ice cream. The price was dependent on the place and its location; for example, the most expensive pints were located at Gallery Market which is in the basement of a residence hall on campus. I found that this was most likely due to the fact that they have a monopoly over the student market: they know that people will shop here anyways because it is so convenient. Unlike a chain store like CVS, they can price things however they want.
In my study, I am making the claim that stores who only sell pints of ice cream are marketed towards single professionals living in the city. This is related both to the layout of the stores and to the ice cream selections. Whole Foods is not very stroller-accessible: to get to the main selection of food you have to either ride down an escalator or go down the stairs. The ice cream section had mostly pints and a few larger containers, but only one flavor so there was most variety with the pints. Trader Joe’s is more compact, and did not have a great ice cream selection. I went at a busy time, so it is possible that they might have a better selection at a time when not as many people are shopping, but the open drawer freezer of ice cream did not have a lot of space for many more items, so I stand by my assumption that this store catered its ice cream to single people. Foggy Bottom Grocery is located in a townhouse, and you must walk up steep steps to get inside the little place. It is also marketed for students, as it is located right across the street from South Hall, a resident hall on GW’s campus and sells marijuana products, Juul pods, red solo cups, and ping pong balls. This wouldn’t be the place to take your young child to get some ice cream. CVS had the best selection of ice cream, as it was the further off campus. However, there still weren’t many big carts to shop with and it is located in a non-residential area on E Street near the Red Cross and the Foreign Service Association. Finally, Gallery Market only sold Ben & Jerry’s and Halo Top pints at the high price of seven dollars. Although unaffordable for students, this selection is definitely marketed towards them.
During my time conducting fieldwork, I thought a lot about the weather and how this might have affected how many people I saw buying ice cream, which was close to nobody. According to NDTV Food and Meher Rajput, a nutritionist at FITPASS, ice cream can make cold, flu, and infection symptoms worse. In the wintertime, these illnesses are more common, so they advise to stay away from ice cream during the winter and state that you should keep it away from children, since the sugar additives and phlegm-increasing dairy could be disadvantageous in the cold winter months.
In terms of the package sizes, I was shocked at the amount of ice cream I saw. It seemed as though the people in charge of stocking the grocery stores did not have an affinity for the frozen treat and only put the most basic flavors and brands out for consumers to purchase. According to researchers Metin Çakir and Joseph V. Balagtas and their study of package downsizing and customer reaction, people shopping in Chicago were found to be less responsive to package size than to price, so companies can get away with package downsizing more easily. Perhaps I am just more passionate than the average person in regards to package sizes and ice cream amount, but I found the package sizing too small. However, if people are generally more concerned with price, then stores like the ones I visited could get away with selling pints at higher prices if there is nothing else to compare it to: if there were bigger tubs of ice cream next to pints more often, then stores would have to sell the pints for less than they could if they only sold pints. Therefore, this could also be a ploy to sell more while taking up less space.
Performing optical research at five different grocery stores in Washington, D.C. was an experience that will help me to view grocery stores and specific food displays in a different way. I learned that the sizing, pricing, and location of a section is related to whom the store wants to market the products. In these five stores near GW’s campus, ice cream was marketed for the single person who is most likely a student. The people working in these grocery stores did not expect to sell to families or groups larger than two, and the sizing and pricing reflected this fact. Also, I learned that not as many people eat ice cream in the winter! Whether or not this is actually a healthy thing to do, I say that we shouldn’t discriminate ice cream by putting it into a literal box. Well, you know what I mean. Let’s make ice cream a year-round phenomenon! Who wouldn’t want this frozen treat just because it’s cold outside?
"Is It Safe To Give Your Children Ice Cream During Winters?" NDTV Food. January 11, 2018. Accessed April 22, 2019. https://food.ndtv.com/food-drinks/is-it-safe-to-give-your-children-ice-cream-during-winters-1797860.
Çakır, Metin, and Joseph V. Balagtas. "Consumer Response to Package Downsizing: Evidence from the Chicago Ice Cream Market." Journal of Retailing90, no. 1 (2014): 1-12. doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2013.06.002.