The Culture Of A Grocery Store

In response to question 9, Updike's view on supermarket society. I loved his analysis, comparing shoppers to sheep slowly pushing their carts through the store. It is so true, when you are out shopping and take notice of people, most shoppers are on autopilot just going through the motions. Grocery shopping is such a mundane task, and people are focused on their grocery list and tend not to notice

A sociological perspective is a framework for thinking about, describing, or explaining how human activities are organized and how people relate to one another and respond to their surroundings.

Produce procurement, a long-studied topic in cultural anthropology, defines the everyday interactions relating to values and norms as well as power through a simple outlet: food. For this ethnographic observation: produce procurement, I decided to observe one of the bigger grocery store chains, Jewel. It was here, where I observed different views and concepts relating to food venues, specifically grocery stores, that are important to both producer and consumer in aesthetic, type of produce, demographic, and communication.

The things a person could see if they simply watched Walmart’s customers for even a short amount of time are mind boggling. During a typical, mundane Monday afternoon, I browsed through Walmart 's many aisles not in search of a particular product, but simply observing and studying different aspects of the supermarket. The customer’s behavior, product placement, and employee interactions all stood out to me as interesting. I also took notice of how different consumers interacted with different staff members and vice-versa. As I observed the customers, teachings from my Sociology class immediately started taking form in the real world. While analyzing the different social interactions the people of Walmart were having, I begin to apply different theories, such as the functionalist theory, why these things must happen, the conflict theory, why they are unequal, and symbolic interaction, how they happen. Surprisingly, while watching the average day in Walmart, I found it was hard to ignore my ethnocentric viewpoint, thinking your culture is better than another, to cloud my perspective of why certain interactions were occurring.

In the U.S, many public organizations are highly influenced by its connection between its outlooks about sex and its use of space. Within these gendered places, men and women act out masculine and feminine characteristics and gendered actions. In this ethnographic research paper, I will establish how a normal department store strengthens the gender and space association through its use of space, products within those spaces and customer use of these spaces.

Commonly, culture is considered large and extravagant events and holidays, such as Diwali, a wedding, or the Fourth of July. Each event and holiday have specific traits and rituals that occur to distinguish the event from everyday life, but culture isn’t exclusive to lavish events such as these and include everyday activities such as watching a football game and listening to a speech. Every belief, behavior, and symbolic system that a person shares with another is an example of culture. Authors Anne Fadiman and Joshua Reno explores the different aspects of culture and ethnography in their two books, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, and Waste Away: Working and

Every single individual on this planet has their own distinctive identity and culture. Our culture helps us identify who we are and where we come from. In today’s world, it appears that cultural diffusion has become a normal part of everyone’s life as cultural trends, beliefs and customs spread quickly from one culture to another. In his poem, “Coca-Cola and Coco Frio,” Martin Espada provides his readers with a great example of cultural diffusion that a boy encounters when he visits his native country, Puerto Rico. The “fat boy” mentioned in the poem is none other than Martin Espada himself (3). By sharing his childhood experience in Puerto Rico, Espada tries to prove that acceptance of other cultures can have a negative impact as people incline to neglect their own cultural values and begin to bear a resemblance to other countries.

Marion Nestle, a teacher at New York University, examines how supermarkets are designed and how the design affects consumers in her essay “The Supermarket: The Prime Estate”. “Nestle teaches in the department of nutrition, food studies, and public health” (496). The essay was published in one of her numerous books, What to Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating in 2006. Nestle investigates the strategic method behind the store’s layout in this essay for the average consumer. Nestle portrays the manipulations of supermarkets to sell the most products possible to consumers through the store’s order and design through logos, pathos, and cause and consequence in the development of her essay.

Whole Foods is a great example of democratic approach to store operation. In this organizational environment all team members have the ability to insert their input in decision making that affects their product/service area in addition to having input in store matters as well. Whole Foods has a stringent screening process potential employees are put through to ensure that the applicant is a good fit for the organization. Once an applicant is hired, they are assigned to a team and team leader, who then train the new team member to be knowledgeable on the product/service they are assigned to. Additionally, they are also trained on providing friendly customer service. Due to Whole Foods approach to using workplace democracy, it has created a positive

For this project I was planning to visit some kind of international or ethnic event such a festival or foreign holiday celebration. However, after spending couple hours of searching on google, unfortunately I was not able to find any kind of international activities around Denver area that were scheduled for the end of March. Trip to the any kind of church did not sound very entertaining and inspiring to me. I am not atheist and do believe that there is some kind of superstitious force or god out there, but all the church visits and religious rituals or services bore me to death. So, I decided that church trip would not be such a good idea. Since my last choice for this project was visiting Ethnic grocery store I got on computer and googled “Middle Eastern grocery stores in Denver”. I decided to go with Middle Eastern store and not Asian or Hispanic because I’ve never been in one, and never really tried any type of Middle Eastern food, but I do like to try different foods and love to cook. Besides that I go to Asian stores quite often, and Hispanic stores are all over Colorado, so I thought they would not be so exiting to me.

Many Supermarkets have tried to understand the ethnic shift that has been happening in the US, and many of them have target Hispanic/Latinos consumers, in the year 2004, a Chinese supermarket entered in the US in order to capture the share of the rising Asian population living in this country. GW (Great Wall) supermarkets, they offer all sort of Asian products displayed in a typical American supermarket style. Currently they have 10 stores and they are present in 5 states (Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia). Due to its small size, compared to other supermarkets, there is not much information available about its market share and growth. But if we take into account, that Asians are considered the fastest growing minority

On Saturday, November 14th of 2015 I visited the Maine Mall from around 2:50 pm to 4:30 pm to make observations of adolescents from another culture. I chose to visit the Maine Mall because it is a place where adolescents frequently visit to socialize with friends in a public place. The place that seemed most obvious to observe was clearly the food court. The food court gathers people of all ethnicities and ages to sit down and be themselves while enjoying a meal. I found a comfortable table on the outskirts of the food court where I was able to be the eyes and ears of the whole place. This place was essential because I had perfect view of three different groups of teenagers sitting in groups of three or four.

Have you noticed the issues of how people in our culture think about and acquire food? For this assignment I have observed food acquisition at a grocery store. The data collection is consisted of two separate parts: fieldwork notes part one and brief interviews part two. The verbal questionnaire’s (mini- interviews) lasted from 2-5 minutes per person out of the ten individuals. The observations are broken down into blocks, meaning I observed the exterior and interior of the store. I under took the project at the Whole Foods Market located in Beverly Hills. I have shopped at whole foods numerous times, but decided that I should observe a location I have not been to. As a result my observations of the store do not get clouded by my opinions.

     In order to analyze an industry, it is important to determine where it is in the industry lifecycle. During the 1970’s and 1980’s the retail grocery industry was expanding at a phenomenal rate. Throughout this boom period, the number of large grocery stores was rising and forcing the existing” Mom and Pop” grocery stores out of the industry.

Abstract The main purpose of this report is to make references to significant microeconomic models, in order to explain the supply, Demand, Market equilibrium, price discrimination, and Opportunity rate as well as making references to important macroeconomic aims which can be described with some examples such as growth, Inflation, Unemployment, GDP, exchange rates and many more, this two business economic topics are very relevant in today’s market as they represent the real-world meaning of the business area. This report will analyze both parties and evaluate any issues happening to date.