I am one of those grocery shoppers who has the stores memorized. I know where things are and about what they cost (give or take some coinage). This helps me be very efficient in my shopping, which is important to me because I am busy and not rich.
Recently, ALL the stores I go to have been rearranging their shelves. I don't mean that they're switching the order of the brands on the cereal aisle; they're moving the cereal to where the automotive supplies used to be and the automotive supplies to where the feminine products used to be. The three stores that I frequent are doing this: Costco, Fred Meyer, and Trader Joes. Why are they doing this?
Theories:
1) It's the end of some fiscal year. The stores realized that their sales are down. They are trying to confuse shoppers into spending more time in the stores (and possibly buying more goods because they are wandering down all the aisles looking for item X and happen upon item Y) by completely rearranging the products.
2) The price of gas is causing the stores to raise their prices. They don't want the customers to notice an all-around price increase, so they confuse them by moving everything around. (If this is true, it is working somewhat -- by the time I find the item I am looking for, I either a) can't remember what it cost before because I used all of my brain to find the item, or b) am so happy that I found the item that I forget to look to see what it costs.)
3) Possibly, coincidentally, they've all run out of shelf space in their stores and hired someone to help them better organize the stores' layouts so that more items can fit.
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