Persuasion and Consumption at Trader Joe’s

“Welcome to Trader Joe’s, Your Neighborhood Grocery Store” reads the top of this store’s website. When you go into the actual store, an equally welcoming message awaits you, and not only in verbal form. On Capitol Hill in Seattle, Trader Joe’s (or TJ, as often referred to by loyal customers) is located on 17th and Madison, about five blocks east of the Seattle University campus. The interior of the store has a comfortable and approachable feel to it, helping promote its affordability and community involvement. The ongoing theme in stores as well as on the website are Hawaiian flowers and cedar planks, which decorate not only the walls, but also the staff’s t-shirts. Already, you are in the right mood to walk around the place and check out their products.

Around the store, are featured items, which are often chosen according to season and piled up at the end of an aisle. Now, these items include apple cider and maple leaf cookies. With four or five of these around, the piles often need restocking. Featuring them and making it impossible not to pass by is a successful marketing strategy. Another vey successful strategy here is the tasting booth. This one is not like Costco where they have a woman of age whose hair doesn’t have a smidge of oxygen underneath her plastic cap yell out about the delicious packaged chili. Here, there is a stand of more substantial structure that looks like it’s made of straw and bamboo (Hawaiian theme). Behind it is an employee serving out small portions of whatever has been prepared. On this day it’s beer bread topped with some butter. It was delicious, and yes, I considered purchasing it to have my roommate taste. They marketing ploy almost worked, but I set it down, figuring I should spend the $3 on cheese instead. But I’m certain other equally satisfied customers did buy this TJ product.

Perhaps the most prominent marketing strategy at TJ’s is its approachability. The prices below the items all look like they are handwritten with a sharpie, as do the big signs. Staff members will all greet you, a few strike up a conversation. Most of them are in their twenties and thirties. The cashier and I had a very friendly conversation about our Halloween weekends during which another cashier chimed in to remind him that his skeleton mask was left at his house. In our textbook “Persuasion and Influence in American Life,” Woodward and Denton claim that “the most effective form of persuasion is that which is created with a specific audience in mind” (267) and TJ has a rather specific audience. It is a grocery store, so it will tend to anybody who comes through its door, but its target audience, as the staff demographic portrays, is the young crowd (at this location at least). TJ has low prices and a wide variety of frozen and pre-made meals ideal for the student and those without families to cook meals for all the time. It also closely tends to the vegetarians and vegans by providing a number of items for their specific diets. Additionally, they sell a few bathroom and cleaning products that are environmentally friendly for the simple consumers who choose not to opt for name brand shampoos. TJ knows how to gain the attention of its audience (be friendly and casual), address its needs (low budget, special diet, environmentally friendly) and solve its problems (low prices, own products).

Trader Joe’s definitely tries to “promote the recognition of one’s uniqueness” (271) in its marketing techniques, especially by standing out from other franchise supermarkets, making its customers stand out, feel unique. Its strategies in general, as I noticed more during my last visit to the store, appeal to emotion with the use of humor in the rhetoric on their signs for example, the friendly staff who make you feel welcome, the maple leaf cookies as an ode to all, etc. They also use rational functional appeals by setting the norms for the “right” kinds of groceries to purchase and the “right” store to go to in the area. They do so also with reminder ads that you find in you mailbox or on someone’s tote or t-shirt that they bought at the store (297).

“The more pervasive and persuasive, the more invisible advertising becomes in terms of influence and impact. Its presence and images become natural, expected, and even desired” (268). I would say that this has certainly been the case for Trader Joe’s. The store has become a definite a staple in this neighborhood (I do not have another experience with TJ’s to compare this to). Undoubtedly, the marketing has played a large role in this. You like the store, you will talk about it to all your friends and they will become regulars there too. You will also carry the TJ tote that you will carry around town and everybody will somehow be exposed to TJ. The store also sends newsletters to neighborhood residents and participates in certain community events. We find it in a lot more places than we think and it has become so natural that we don’t notice when it’s actually being advertised. TJ marketing is marketing well done.