Subconscious Marketing

So here’s the deal…every week we get a mailer advertising 3 incredible deals for our local grocery store. A lot of the time its things like a gallon of milk for .99 or free bananas, etc. The last few weeks however there has been a coupon for .10 off each gallon of gas you purchase from the store’s gas station. Cool, right? Maybe not – at least for me… See when I realized I had saved a little over a dollar on my gas purchase I thought to myself…”hmm self, you could use a Gatorade right about now…and since you just saved a dollar you can go into the convenience store and get one for only .50!” Wow! That’s a great deal!!! So I did. Only later did I realize that I had been taken by the scam of getting me in the door.
See, today people pay at the pump more and more and rarely go inside. This, I believe is hurting a lot of gas stations. So they need some way to get you inside to see all of the high priced goodies. Enter the coupon that conveniently (or not) you have to use inside…and thus my flavored drink purchase. Pretty smart.