Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Introduction
50 minutes	Part A: Supermarket Field Trip
20 minutes	Part B: Field trip reflection

Introduction

View our powerpoint 'The 4 Ps of marketing' with your class.

Encourage discussion of the points raised, focusing specially on promotion and place - they will be particularly relevant for the field trip.

Part A: Supermarket Field Trip

Field trip! You'll need to organise transport to your local supermarket, whether that means hiring a bus, or arranging a couple of extra adults to help supervise students.

Once you arrive at the supermarket, hand out the student fieldwork sheet for the supermarket study. Run students through the instructions on the sheet (reproduced below):

Find seven products in the supermarket to research. You need to look for the first five in specific locations, but the last two can come from anywhere in the store.
Record details of any promotions around the product, as well as details about the amount of sugar in the product.
Once you have completed your research, fill in the comments section, writing down what you have noticed about the products, prices, promotions, placement and sugar content.

Allow your students to roam the store looking for information, but make sure they aren't being a nuisance to staff or other shoppers.

OR Part A: Online Supermarket Research

If it's not feasible to make the trip to a local supermarket, you might instead get your students to research how the supermarket arranges and presents its products online.

Hand out the student worksheet for online research. Run students through the instructions on the sheet (reproduced below):

Find seven products from the supermarket online store to research. You need to look for the first five in specific locations on the website, but the last two can come from anywhere.
Record details of any promotions around the product, as well as details about the amount of sugar in the product.
Once you have completed your research, fill in the comments section, writing down what you have noticed about the products, prices, promotions, placement and sugar content.

Part B: Field Trip Reflection

This part gives students an opportunity to analyse and reflect on their findings once they are back from the field trip (or the online research session).

Step 1.

In a whole class discussion, ask students to reflect on their findings around product naming, price, promotion, and placement. What were some of the tactics they noticed? Were there any patterns or similarities to how things were advertised?

Move the conversation towards high-sugar products. Did they have any patterns around placement or promotion? Were they clustered in certain places?

We don't know exactly how your local supermarket or online store will be laid out, but typically in a supermarket you'll find high sugar or junk food products in a sale section near the store entrance, or right before the checkouts (to promote 'impulse purchases'). Use this knowledge to inform your discussion of students' findings: did students find high sugar products in those locations? Or did they find something different? How is your local supermarket promoting and placing high sugar products in relation to what we'd typically expect to see?

Step 2.

As a conclusion to the lesson, view this video from Phenomenom, where students go into a supermarket and carry out a research project similar to the one your class has just completed.

'Consumer Behaviour | Positive Pester Power' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPmBWQX_JwM)

Invite students to note any similarities and differences between their supermarket field trip and that of the students in the video. Does the video contain any information that casts a new light on their research? Alternately, if you focused on online research, how might some of this information be translated into a digital context? How do supermarket stores online draw your attention towards particular products?

The video also introduces the concept of Pester Power, which is when supermarkets place goods in places that children will see, so that kids will pester their parents to buy those products. Ask students to get into pairs, and have one student explain the idea to the other. Then the second student (the 'listener') should come up with an example of Pester Power from their own experience - they might remember an instance where they've pestered their parents to buy something, or where they've seen a sibling or a friend do it.

Encourage students to think about how supermarkets are using Pester Power to turn kids into marketing machines. You have a great opportunity here to help students become more reflective and thoughtful consumers - lean into it!

If you would like to look further into this resource, Phenomenom have a full curriculum-aligned lesson here:

https://phenomenom.com.au/topic/super-humans/the-one-with-the-pestering/

It's really cool!

Differentiated Learning

Extension - Students work in pairs to draft a letter to their local supermarket about creating a healthier checkout space. You could alternately encourage students to write a letter to the local paper or media outlet, explaining the findings from their supermarket study and publicising the issues that they have identified.

Provisions for Learning Support - Be aware that some students may feel sensitive about their weight or about their family’s shopping choices. Encourage discussion of how the supermarket system works rather than of the personal choices made by students or parents.

Teacher Reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

Taking it Further

If you would like more information about SugarByHalf or the movement to reduce our sugar intake, check out the SugarByHalf Teachers Network here.

SugarByHalf would also love to share the results of your teaching with the world! If your students are making amazing changes, consider emailing info@sugarbyhalf.com to let them know. They're excited to tell people about your success!

SugarByHalf - Shopping Studies

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