Candy Companies Want You to Stop Using Your Smartphone While Shopping

Food manufacturers across the nation have a big problem: our smartphones. It's not that they don't want us using them to access apps and then buy their stuff, they still want us to do that. Companies — specifically candy producers and magazine publishers — are annoyed with our smartphones because instead of grabbing something from the grocery store aisle while we wait in line, we're looking at our phones. When we look at our phones we miss the Twix; we bypass the fashion mag. And that's not good for sales.

In 2009, a study sponsored by Mars, Time Warner, Wrigley, Coca-Cola, and other manufacturers revealed that Americans love candy. The report found that about one percent of all grocery store sales were made via checkout aisles, and candy accounted for 30 percent of those purchases. Now think about how many grocery stores there are, and how many people visit them each day, sometimes multiple times per day. Hershey, maker of the amazing Hershey with Almonds bar (among other candy greats) claims that 90 percent of its revenue comes from purchases at food and drug stores.

As Jon Nathanson over at PriceEconomics explains, candy means money. "The US grocery business comprises nearly 65,000 supermarkets and other stores, with total annual revenues approaching $550 billion. This [report] suggests that checkout-aisle revenue is a nearly $5.5 billion-a-year business in the US alone." And keep in mind, this was in 2009. No doubt it's more than that now.

While the amount we spend on candy and magazines has gone up, so has the number of people who have smartphones. According to a recent Pew study, 56 percent of the nation say they use a smartphone. This has created a problem for candy producers and magazine houses. So much so that they coined a phrase to describe it: "Mobile blinders." This phenomenon is partly responsible for single copy magazine sales dropping eight percent and candy sales dropping six percent over the past year. "The problem of mobile blinders is a huge factor," Marshal Cohen, an analyst at NPD Group, told Reuters. "Companies have to rethink the in-store experience."

That's exactly what they're doing. Companies have started setting up displays throughout stores to catch people's attention when they're not staring at their screens. There's also companies popping up that create specific ways for companies to target you when you're shopping. Walk past the cookie aisle while looking at your phone and bam! A coupon for Oreos is emailed to you. The companies have plenty of info on you and they'll use it to their advantage. In short, there's no escaping the candy and magazine buying, so you might as well go ahead and do it.

[Pic via Flickr - Jeff Adair]