You ducked into the shop for milk. You walked out with a basket full of products you didn’t plan to buy – chips, chocolates, sugary cereal. Sound familiar?
You already know supermarkets are carefully engineered environments designed to commandeer our attention, exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities, and increase impulse spending – often without us realising it in the moment. Sort of like casinos.
Our team has spent years documenting how the industry meticulously gathers and analyses data on all of us, to craft strategies to make us buy more and eat more.
➡️ Read the interactive story on the five tactics from the supermarket playbook
The post “Milking it: 5 tricks from the supermarket playbook” by Phillip Baker, ARC Future Fellow and Sydney Horizon Fellow, School of Public Health, University of Sydney, University of Sydney was published on 10/27/2026 by theconversation.com