I walked into a small Russian store in St. Louis and saw the owner moving packages of buckwheat and jars of gooseberry preserve from one shelf to another.
“Whenever I have stuff that isn’t moving, I just put it on this shelf that says Featured This Week and people sweep it off the shelf like a hurricane,” he explained. “Even when both shelves have identical items, the Featured shelf empties in 1/10th of the time.”
Years ago, my wife worked in a large big-box retail store to get the employee discount while preparing for the birth of our daughter. I remember talking to her supervisor at an employee picnic he held at his house. This guy had memorized more statistics about the sales rates at different locations in the store than I realized could exist. The gist was, he knew where to put anything in order to sell it, on average, in less than an hour, that day, that week, whatever. Retailers study this and tie it to human psychology and the population responds.
I realized it worked on me, too, when I told him about an impulse purchase I’d made in the automotive section. He laughed and guessed my age in two guesses.
Amazing. Scary, but amazing.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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