"I’ll Take a Case of Costco" Disease

I am glad to know I’m not the only one who has this experience. I walk into my local Costco store to stock up on cafe supplies and often emerge with some huge extravagance that I had no intention of buying. Today’s NY Times had a story about ‘the Costco phenomenon.’

“Temporarily stocked surprises are a calculated part of the Costco shopping experience. “We try to have hundreds of items that are different each time a customer comes to the warehouse, to create a treasure-hunt atmosphere,” said Joel Benoliel, a senior vice president. “We’ll always have the same staples — the cereal, the detergent — and then we add in the ‘wow’ items.” But at the same time, there can be a comforting sameness to each cavernous location.

So, along with purchases of jumbo packs of paper towels and other supplies, impulse buying can be a big part of the Costco experience, because only the most well-liked, trendy, and fast-moving items are stocked.

Those items include iPods, individually wrapped cheese sticks to put in a child’s lunch box, as well as a few of the latest fashions.

FOR those who want to minimize impulse buying, consumer experts say, it is helpful to shop as infrequently as possible, to arrive at the store with a list and a budget, and to walk down only the aisles that contain an item on the list. Conventional wisdom would also say that it is a good idea not to shop when hungry.

Crucial to the company’s continued growth will be people like the Schneiders, who find shopping at Costco both utilitarian and serendipitous. “I might be going in for lettuce,” said Ms. Schneider, who on the spur of the moment once bought a $2,000 baby grand electronic piano at Costco, “but if I come out with other things, I don’t mind.”