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Retail stores are experts at separating consumers from their hard earned money, with some spending millions of dollars a year on researching how to get you to spend more with each visit.  Many consumers find themselves helpless against this onslaught and routinely walk out of retail stores carrying many more items than they intended to purchase and spending much more than they intended to spend.  Here are five of the most common tactics used by retail stores to increase your spending and the steps that you can take to avoid them.

Tactic #1 – Placing Shopping Carts By The Entrance
Many retail stores place shopping carts by the entrance so that people that are shopping in the store will not limit themselves to the items that they can carry.  Retailers know that if a person has a lot of space in their cart, they are less likely to hesitate to pick up an item that they perceive to be a good deal, even if they do not really need the product.  If you are going into a store to pick up a few items, leave the shopping cart at the entrance and carry the items by hand or in the small hand baskets that the stores generally hide inside the store.

Tactic #2 – More Expensive Items Placed At Eye Level
Many consumers that are faced with a large amount of choices will generally choose the first product that they see that is acceptable, especially if they are in a rush.  This is especially true at grocery stores where there could be 50 different types of canned vegetables and 70 different varieties of cereal to choose from.  By placing the most expensive items or the items with the highest profit margins at eye level and the least expensive items near the floor or on the top shelf, the store is increasing the chance that you will choose the higher priced item.

Tactic #3 – Staple Items Spread Throughout The Store
Some of the most common items that people travel to the grocery store for are bread, milk, and eggs because these are the items that they generally run out of the quickest.  Grocery stores know this and will place the bread in aisle 1, the milk in aisle 18, and the eggs in the back of the store to get you to walk past nearly every item in the store to get the few items that you were looking for.  This increases the chance that you will see something that you believe to be a good deal or that you forgot that you needed and will purchase more items while you are in the store.

Tactic #4 – Items That Are Not On Sale Displayed To Look Like They Are On Sale
Who can resist a good sale?  Sometimes stores will create an elaborate display at the end of an aisle, where it is more noticeable, with the price of the item in large letters like it is the best deal in the world or place the items in bins instead of on shelves to make them look like clearance items.  In many cases, the prices displayed for these items will be no different or only a few cents less than the regular price of the item, but because of the perceived sale more people might pick up the item for purchase.

Tactic #5 – Placing The More Profitable Departments At The Front Of The Store
Many retailers plan their stores to make customers walk past most of the high priced, high profit items on their way to the lower priced items at the back of the store.  This gives the retailer numerous opportunities to entice the consumer to pick up a high profit item that they may not have been considering when they walked into the store.  If you are going into a store for a single item, it is best to walk straight to where the item is located in the store, and then walk straight to the checkout counter to pay and leave.