Seasons & Loss Leaders - How to Gain When Grocery Shopping

There are a number of tactics and tips which you can use to ensure that your grocery bill is significantly reduced. I'm going to have a look at two particular ones now which can sometimes be overlooked. These two bits of advice are to do with something called loss leaders, and also thinking about the importance of the seasons.

You may have come across the term 'loss leader', and not been too sure what it means, or perhaps you have never come across the term. Basically, a loss leader is a product that a retailer sells at a loss. Why on earth would a retailer ever do that? That seems to make absolutely no sense at all, shops are there to make money, not lose it!

The answer is that it is a very clever ploy used by retailers to hook you in and get you to spend more money there than you intended, or even just to get you in the shop when you weren't planning on it. The retailer chooses a popular product which will attract attention, and marks it down in price dramatically so that it undercuts all of the competitors in the area and grabs people's attention. Shoppers may well be enticed into the shop on the basis if this one special discount, and then whilst they are there, have a browse around to see if there are any other bargains. The money which the supermarket loses is only a very small fraction of the amount it makes in the unplanned sales gained by having so many extra shoppers spend so much more time shopping.

However, if you are wise to this tactic, you can look out for the loss leaders (often these are advertised on large posters at the front of the shop, on television or in flyers that come through your door), and purchase these in bulk. Of course, this only works as a money saver if you would have purchased the products anyway. So, if the product being sold at a low price is beans, and you buy these regularly, go in and stock up on a trolley's worth! This will cut a good chunk off your overall bill during the course of the period you would have bought them anyway.

Naturally, if the product being discounted is either perishable, or something you never normally buy, then avoid it, and save your money for the next offer, which may well be better and is almost certainly only just around the next corner. Remember not to limit yourself to one shop - keep your eye open for each supermarket's loss leaders, and take advantage when you can.

As far as seasons are concerned - it makes perfect sense that during the winter you should not buy strawberries, since they are a summer/autumn fruit. Today we are too easily led to believe that any fruit can grow at any time of the year, and we have rather lost touch with the variety of fruits and vegetables during the natural year. Shops still provide these out-of-season fruits, but these are either cultivated in expensive greenhouses or shipped from abroad, all of which not only increases the price but also adds to environmental harm. Knowing what is in season, or about to come into season, will help you to look for those fruits and vegetables which are more locally grown and therefore cheaper.

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