Question

Given the importance of food to many cultures and people, we oftentimes fail to see how various cultures can overtly or covertly divulge information about the importance of certain values just by the manner in which items are arranged in a grocery store. For this activity, each student will identify a large grocery store within 5 miles of his/her residence. Please try to identify a large grocery store chain and is a “dominant culture” store (i.e., a Latin specialty version of a large chain would not be appropriate). Each student should plan to spend at least 60 – 120 minutes at the grocery store taking careful observations of the types of people who frequent the store, the types and availability of the products available for purchase, and the ease of finding both dominant culture (American/White culture) and cultural grocery items. After the observation period, the student should write a brief report that answers the following questions: 1. What type of food or products were most plentiful in the store? What types of food or products were difficult to find? 2. What claims were used to promote food items? Did these items emphasize taste, nutritional value, cost or ease of preparation? 3. What were typically the most expensive items in the store? When a wide range of prices exists for the same type of product, what distinguished the lower from the higher priced versions? 4. What type of behavior did you observe on the part of the shoppers? Under what circumstances did shoppers interact with one another? 5. How were meats and poultry labeled and displayed? What efforts were made to distance these products from their original animal forms? 6. What did you observe about the sizes in which different types of products were available? What did these sizes imply about the social settings in which these products will be used? 7. How were foods from various racial/ethnic groups distributed throughout the store? Were some racial/ethnic foods presented as normative whereas others were presented as unusual or exotic? 8. What other observations did you make that informed you about cultural values? What cultural values were evident in the supermarket setting?

Answer 1

1. Processed food, dairy products and fresh fruits and vegetables.

2. Zero Trans fat, Organic, Hygiene, Taste, Nutritional values. Yes they emphasized taste, nutritional value, cost or ease of preparation.

3. Imported food products were priced highly and exotic fruits and vegetables were highly priced.

When a wide range of prices exists for the same type of product, what distinguished the lower from the higher price is that the brand name of the product, its packaging, the place of its origin, etc.,

4. People tend to buy products which had offers attached to it.

5. Meat and poultry were packed in such a way that the manufacturing date and its date of expiry was mentioned very clearly and the shape in which it was cut for specific dishes and it was stored in a refrigerator so that the bacteria do not accumulate into it and the smell of the meat is contained and can be stored for a longer period of time.

6. The lower size packing was stacked more in numbers as those are fast moving for household uses. Also the price was slightly higher for the lower size packaging.

7. No the food was not arranged according to the various ethnic group but as per the category of food.

8. There was opportunity for everyone to shop. Hence culturally no differences arised