Judging by shelf allocation and the choice of store musak, the company makes nearly all its money selling products that raise both of the indicators mentioned above. Perhaps health checks are a way of measuring the success of their marketing strategies? Maybe, if the indicators all come back bad, they'll tell you to ignore all the health warnings and go for the smokes and the grog - you're pretty much buggered anyway.
To their credit, though, they aren't planning to charge a $7 co-payment. Apparently it's OK to get free health care from your supermarket but not from the government's health department. Sorry, just a little Australian politics there; couldn't help myself.
I'm not sure how it's going to go down with customers. Does the nurse walk up to the guy who is contemplating the frozen food selection and open with something like "Good morning, sir, you look like you could do with a cholesterol and blood pressure check". Is this going to be well received? Isn't it going to sound a bit like "You look a little flabby and unattractive sir, could I confirm that for you?" It's certainly not going to do much for the sales of chicken nuggets.
In the case of some of the real aisle-blockers at my local supermarket, I don't think they'll even offer the test; it'll be a case of
"Paramedics on aisle 9"
and a very fast trip in the corporately badged ambulance to the cardiac unit at the hospital.
In any case, I think they're missing out on some real opportunities here. I might not want a prostate exam in the fresh fruit section but I might be interested in:
Parenting advisers. They could get some people to walk up to some of the parents in the place and tell them what's on our minds. "Just say no to the kid" or "Stick him in the trolley so he stops touching stuff" or "Go and get him, don't just yell - I don't want to hear your profanity laced invective while I'm choosing my chocolates."
A five day menu plan. I don't like cooking and my enthusiasm is dampened even further by the reception that the ninth repetition of Spaghetti Monday gets from my kids. I just can't think of anything new to cook. As I walk in, give me a list of five things I can cook in twenty minutes that aren't spaghetti, taco or sausages and salad. And I don't mean Jamie Oliver "saute the beans, drain the baby asparagus shoots, embarrass the Russian lettuce and humiliate the veal" stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. I can cut up vegies, brown meat, boil pasta and rice and fry things. Start there.
A product locator app. What the hell is the organizing principle behind supermarkets? I want ice-cream cones - they're in the dessert area. I want ice-cream topping - it's in the dessert area but I want a self-saucing pudding? It's in the cake area. Flour, sugar and baking powder are in the cake area too but cocoa is with the coffee. Coffee is with the coffee, as is tea, but decaf is apparently a health food. Sugar is sugar unless it's icing sugar and if you want sauces, marinades or spices - God help you. If I could punch in my shopping list and the app told me which aisles to visit in which order, you could have my loyalty without a card that accrues points like the Atacama accrues rain, leading to rewards that I hope might mean something to my great-grandchildren.
Enforcers on the checkouts. Twelve bottles of Coke, nine packets of chips and forty five tins of cat food do not count as three items. Send the lady, head hung in shame, over to the long queue with the guys who are apparently shopping in preparation for the Rapture.
Traffic cops. Supermarkets are penance for your sins. They are truly terrible places to be and, by shopping in them, I hope I am taking time off my sentence in Purgatory. They are not an opportunity to stop and chat to Doris or L'Shauna and compare pictures of your grandchildren, or your new tattoos or your grandchildren's new tattoos or whatever it is you're going on about. Move it on ladies and get the damn trolleys out of the way.
Whole dollar pricing. Anything within 10c of a full dollar, round off! I'm a grown adult with a certain amount of mathematical ability. Even if I was neither of those things, I could probably figure out that buying 20 items, all with prices within 3c of the full dollar is saving me, at most, 60c. Who on Earth do you think you're kidding after all these years?
And, if you really are still kidding people after all these years, then maybe you're wasting your time giving your customers health checks; they won't understand the results or what to do about them anyway.
Notes:
The strange cooking directions and the attractive photo of Richard E Grant come from "Posh Nosh". Very funny. If you haven't seen any, try this one for starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjR0yL4f0Y
"Smokes" and "Grog" are Australian slang for cigarettes and alcohol.
Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time. Please share this with your friends.
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