Thinking Inside the Box
Breakfast cereal is a staple component of the morning meal in America. It is also a frequent snack and can even be eaten as an afternoon or evening meal. Capitalizing on the role that breakfast cereal plays in the American diet, producers compete for buyers using a variety of mechanics including colorful packaging, third party certifications (non-GMO project, USDA Organic, 100% Whole Grain, etc.), statements about nutritional information and quality on packaging, and other marketing techniques. Due to the versatility of cereal, it comes in a vast variety of brands, types, and flavors ranging from sugar sweetened cereals made from refined grains and vibrant food dyes to health cereals full of nuts and whole grains and everything in between. Thus, grocery stores ranging from small corner stores to high-end natural markets, often have a large aisle devoted to the display and sale of cereal. I examined the grocery store cereal aisles at four locations by conducting field visits to the stores. I gave attention to the location of the cereal in the store, layout of the cereal aisle, and marketing of the cereal by its own packaging in order to analyze how this staple product’s marketing, variety, and distribution at different locations.
Methods
I conducted field research at four grocery stores with a repeat visit to one of the stores. During the visits, the cereal aisle was located and its surroundings were recorded taking note of where the aisle was located within the store, any labels marking the aisle, and the other items in the aisle. Then, the cereal brands carried by the store were recorded. After recording the cereal brands, stream of consciousness observations about the cereal aisle and its content were made and recorded. Attention was given to finding patterns in the layout of the aisle, differences in children’s and adults cereals, and the presence and marketing of non-GMO and organic cereals. Visits were unstructured and observations were primarily noted based on what the store was emphasizing in its displays. Photographs of the cereal aisle, displays, and anything of note were taken at each grocery store. Visits lasted approximately one hour. Following a store visit the data was reviewed and a summary of observations along with relevant photographs were posted on this Tumblr page.
Grocery Stores
Four grocery stores, all located within northwest Washington, D.C. were visited. The Whole Foods Market in Foggy Bottom was visited first and again fifth. It is a high-end organic market in a compact, urban location that is near a residential neighborhood, a private university, and a business district. The second store visited was the Virginia Avenue CVS Pharmacy in Foggy Bottom. Although it is primarily a pharmacy, this CVS location also functions as a corner store where a small selection of grocery items can be bought. The CVS is a compact urban store located near businesses, hotels, and a private university. The third store visited was the Foggy Bottom Trader Joe’s Market. It is a friendly market with a warm inviting interior, handwritten labels, and chatty employees. It carries primarily store-branded products and is located in an urban environment near a residential neighborhood and a business district. The fourth store visited was Safeway on Macarthur Boulevard, which is a compact, urban branch of one of the largest chain grocery stores in the Unites States. It is located near a residential neighborhood alongside several shops and restaurants.
Findings
The location of the cereal aisle varied by store due to differences in the store’s layouts, but the cereal aisle was always located in a well trafficked area of the store either near the center or off to the side surrounded by other staple goods. Within the same aisle, other breakfast foods including granola, oatmeal, and cereal/granola bars were also present. Also, cereal was in the same aisle as baking goods in all the stores visited except Trader Joe’s. These pairings could indicate that grocery stores cluster breakfast foods together and cluster staple foods together for the ease of the customer.
Within the cereal aisle, organization of the cereal varied by store. Whole Foods organized its cereal by brand with no clear pattern to the ordering of the brands except that children’s cereal focused brands like Envirokids and Annie’s were clustered together at the beginning of the aisle. Trader Joe’s was organized by brand with the five not store-brand cereals grouped together. Most cereal at Trader Joe’s is store brand so store brand cereals were organized by cereal type and were arranged in such a way that the box colors and patterns gave the appearance of variety. The cereal at CVS was primarily organized by brand except for Kellogg’s cereal which was spread throughout the aisle and the children’s cereal was primarily located on the bottom shelf. The cereal at Safeway was not organized by brand, but was arranged in a spectrum going from children’s cereal to everyday adult’s cereal to health cereal to natural cereal.
All the stores visited had non-GMO and organic options available. Whole Foods had the largest variety within these options with all but one of its cereal brands being labeled as non-GMO. At Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, organic cereals were integrated with the other cereal options with little marketing distinctions between the two which seemed to elevate the appearance of the surrounding non-organic products. CVS and Safeway did separate their organic cereals and these cereals were packaged in more neutral tones with lighter backgrounds. This allowed customers a distinct choice, but did not mark either choice as recommended over the other.
As briefly mentioned in the organization discussion above, the treatment of children’s cereal varied by store. In Whole Foods, three children’s cereal brands with colorful packaging and cartoon images were grouped together while the other three brands with children’s cereal, marked by smaller differences in packaging, had the children’s cereal integrated with the adult’s cereal. Similarly, Trader Joe’s which had very few types of children’s cereal, did not place this cereal in a special location. The children’s cereal at CVS and Safeway was grouped together. This could indicate that natural food markets tend to de-emphasize the differentiation of children’s and adult’s cereals, or could reflect differences in shopper tendencies to buy children’s cereal at natural food markets.
Before my second visit to Whole Foods, General Mill’s Honey Nut Cheerio’s “Bring Back the Bees” campaign was brought to my attention and with it a new attention to the cereal aisle. During this visit, I noticed that two other brands of cereal also have bee related campaigns with Cascadian Farms having “Bee Friendlier” statement on all its cereal boxes and One Degree having a “BeeSmart” statement on its Honey O’s. This experience shows that marketing a company’s sustainable practices can make consumers more aware of those practices in their general shopping and could be used as a method to help push consumers to actively buy more sustainable products.
Several aspects of this study indicate that ideas of ethical consumerism are present in the breakfast cereal aisle. The marketing on cereal boxes often shows nutritional and environmentally friendly messages that encourage consumers to make choices for ethical reason including feeding yourself and your family the healthiest food and consuming the food that was produced in the most environmentally friendly way. The marketing and organization in Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s seems to encourage more environmentally sustainable ethical consumerism. This is seen by their attention organic and non-GMO cereals while deemphasizing differences between children’s cereals and healthy cereals. CVS and Safeway seem to encourage more health centered ethical consumerism by separating sugar sweeten children’s cereal from cereals high in fiber and promoted as healthy.
Future Recommendations
The major limitation of this study is that it is purely observational due to the short-term nature of the assignment and the accessibility limitations of students. As a purely observational study, no information on the perspectives of the customers or the intentions of the store’s management were obtained so any analysis related to these perspectives and intentions are speculative and cannot be stated with any level of certainty. Including participant-observation and interviews could help to reveal these customer perspectives and management intentions and future research using these methods could be used for a more in-depth study. Such a study could examine questions such as what types of cereals are people choosing to buy and what factors influence these purchasing decisions? And how does customer’s cereal purchasing patterns influence the organization of stores’ cereal aisles?
Purely observational studies do, however, have some advantages including accessibility as no special access or relationships are necessary, a high level of trust in the data as it is all gathered from direct observation with no added uncertainty as to whether participants are being wholly truthful or not, and the ability to freely gather large amounts of data. These strengths make a purely observational study an ideal method for a short-term student project as it gives students access to a wealth of data without the need for time consuming planning, obtaining permission, and arranging and conducting interviews.