Supermarkets: Productivity or Just a Product?

Shopping for groceries today seems like a mindless chore, but how did we come to select these choices? How did the supermarket come to be a part of our everyday life? By reexamining the history of the technologies within the supermarket, and the supermarket as an assemblage, we can begin to see the ways in which they have shaped our current articulations through consumption practices.

In 1916, one of the premier cities of the “self-service” grocery stores, zanily called Piggly Wiggly, was Memphis, Tennessee brought by the innovator Clarence Sanders. The self-service grocery store radically changed the way in which people obtained their food and other miscellaneous items. Instead of having of a mediator or clerk to select and garner the goods to purchase for the consumer, the earlier grocery store style, or A&P style, the consumers readily had a myriad of goods displayed to choose from for themselves. The consumers were given baskets to select their own items from the shelves, having to traverse every isle, viewing each product to select the ones they wanted. This gave the consumers the affect, or emotion, of having the freedom to choose their own products thus equating freedom with shopping. But were they? Mike Freeman in an article of the opening of the store said, “ Then forced by the construction of the shelves, they turned back to the front entrance. They could only move in one direction inside the Piggly Wiggly. They had to pass every item Clarence Saunders had for sale.”

Although the shelf construction seems like an architectural ploy, it can be viewed as a harbinger to modern day advertising via the arrangement of products on the shelves. Forcing the customers to view each and every product.

Turnstile gates, directing traffic flow

The delivery method had also changed. After purchasing the products at the register, customers delivered their own groceries to their home rather than the clerks doing so, of which most people were accustomed to with the usual grocery stores. The added “so called” inconveniences of shopping and delivering for themselves at the self-service grocery store did not deter shoppers. For one thing, the prices were cheaper than at other rivaling grocery stores and secondly, the grocery store became an organized social gathering where consumers could shop in a relatively quick way, and visit with their friends. Convenience is not an inherently bad trait, but as discussed by Thomas F. Tierney in our book, "convenience becomes a problem when the value of convenience and the desire to achieve convenience come to dominate technological culture.” Taking from the modern dictionary definition of convenience “being comfortable for use,” and comfort, “ satisfaction of bodily needs,” these two become main attributes of buying and consuming to fulfill these bodily needs.

The newly arranged products spoke for themselves, with labels and price tags on the item, and there was no need for proprietors to hire extra help at the self- service grocery because it was replete with “weights and scales to weigh their own goods.” The self-service stores were more efficient and only needed a limited amount of employees to stock and ring up the customers allowing for more business and foot traffic to occur and with less effort. Efficiency, as our book describes, is another way in which we qualify progress. The more that is produced in less time with added profit, will be the most efficient. And for Whom? The business owners will benefit, but not the workers. Contrarily, the workers will feel alienated, forced to produce repetitious movements like a machine.

The self-service grocery was a hit and by 1930, the worlds first warehouse supermarket was located in New York City under the guise of King Kullen. With this larger than life construct came larger than life products focused on selling in volume and at lower prices. The supermarket organized their use of space with parking lots allowing for easy accessibility. It didn’t take long before the one-stop shop became recognized as a profitable way to have larger stores that could produce the revenue of multiple smaller stores with fewer employees.

By the 50s and 60s people had moved to suburban areas where they could conveniently shop and consume at supermarkets, which gave the appearance of a better life. As our book explains, people have a propensity to amalgamate an idea of progress, with something new, “ a moving forward, with progress as material and moral betterment, a movement towards utopia”(p.6). These tacit assumptions become part of our everyday experience and breed a culture organized around purchasing new and improved lives.