The Garden Statement Part II: Shopping in Whippany

Since I've been living in a furnished apartment, I've had a much more detailed introduction into the US shopping experience than I have in countries where I stay in hotels.

It's not that different from South Africa in many respects. There are the same basic advertising media and retail channels that I'm used to, but there are some subtle differences.

I've been to Target, and it's like a typical hypermarket in South Africa. I bought some basic groceries there on my first day, and although in general groceries are more expensive here, it wasn't too bad. I have a few comments, though. First off, the following products:

The Jif-brand faux-Nutella was slightly cheaper than the branded stuff, and not too bad, but I changed back to the Good Stuff when I realised how small the price difference was. The peanut butter did, in all fairness, say "extra chunky", so I can't really take issue with the fact that it was basically a bottle of peanuts with a bit of peanut butter gluing them together, but as for the tub on the left: it's quite serviceable margarine, but anyone who "can't believe it's not butter" has never actually tasted butter. And, Unilever, don't even think of pointing me at the disclaimer "Tastes as good as fresh butter, according to 4 out of 5 butter users"! "as good as" ≠ "I can't believe it's not". C'est magnifique, mais c'est ne pas la buerre!

Ooh, pretty!  Do these make my feet look big?

A bit later, I went shoe shopping at Target, because my takkies needed replacing. While there, I saw some very nice-looking Swissgear hiking boots, and briefly understood what it must be like to enjoy shoe-shopping. Unfortunately, they were not as comfortable as they looked, so I just bought a pair of sneakers for about $30.

King's is a much higher-tone establishment than Target. There is a King's within a few km of my flat: my closest real grocery store. For my South African friends: it's quite similar to Spar. It was a bit more expensive than I preferred, though, so I next went to my second closest grocery store: Stop&Shop. I was impressed by the fact that you can check your own groceries at a self-service counter, but my colleague Deborah pointed out that they have a further level of convenience:

That's right, you can scan and bag your groceries as you go through the shop, and when you're done, you just pay at the self-service counter, hang up your scanner, and go! No human interaction required (yes, even for that green pepper you see there!) I guess the shop has to trust its customers to an extent for this to work, but I'm not sure how their security is set up to detect fraud.

As for the range of products, they have a few interesting items that I wasn't familiar with:

Celery roots: I never knew one ate anything except the stem!

Half-and-Half: it's half milk, half cream.

Another thing I was only vaguely aware of was how bad US chocolate is.  I'd heard rumours, but until I tasted one of these:

I really had no idea.  I thought it had gone bad: it tasted vile! Then colleague Shelly clued me into the history: apparently American consumers had gotten used to the taste of chocolate made with stale milk, to such an extent that butyric acid is added to much American chocolate to satisfy that expectation!


Now I'm going to talk about advertising, so here's some fair warning:

I was amazed at the varying quality of American TV advertising. Some is great: I even enjoy watching some of the TV ads. just like in South Africa. Some is absolutely terrible:

Seriously, what do a CGI-generated general and a penguin have to do with insurance? And then there are thoroughly corny ads featuring a mutilated song from Grease about "summer savings" on Nissans. And then an ad for my local Honda dealership clued me in. The fact that a small-town car dealership can afford to advertise on Cable TV implies that you can target your ad extremely locally: in fact, as colleague Khyati explained, you can target by zip code.  When you're not paying through the nose for placement, there's less incentive to go the extra mile on production values.

Then there's the outdoor advertising. Africa has, if anything, bigger and more in-your-face billboards than here (probably because of the lower penetration of other media? I'm not sure.) but there were some interesting little billboards advertising local businesses:

Yes, that's right: the Honda dealership had a much cornier outdoor campaign than even their TV campaign would have suggested. They win the prize for the least inspiring Olympic tie-in I've ever seen on any product, with an honorable mention for the greengrocer's apostrophe.

I'd always asssumed that freemasonry was a secret society, and in many places they're frankly regarded with suspicion, but here they advertise right on the roadside, and proudly announce their presence. I suppose nowadays they're much like Rotary or the Shriners.

As far as car stuff goes, there are also a few quirks. Because of the law in New Jersey, I don't get to pump my own gas, so that's much like South Africa, but here you have to check to see what the gas station charges per gallon: it's not all one price! Also, whereas in South Africa you'd never find a petrol station without compressed air available for free to fill your tyres, I couldn't find one single gas station along Route 10 which has compressed air! I had to go to the tyre repair place that has a contract with the rental agency when my low-pressure warning light came on.

While waiting for them, I wandered around and found a shop called (and I'm not making this up, I swear!) "Guidolume". They specialize in lights and clocks. They had walls full of clocks, so naturally I went there to kill some time. They had lots of relatively nondescript grandfather clocks,

but their wall clocks finally brought out the snob in me. They had the level of understatement and sophistication that perfectly suit a pretentious South African blue-collar home. Swarovski crystals and Christmas chimes (shudder).

The cable TV was also interesting.  Just as Danielle had noticed in South Africa, I also found that the "naughty" words had been censored from some of the channels.  But while looking for some nerdy entertainment one evening, I found that for those desperate enough, there are … other options:

Let me hasten to add that I have never and will never buy pay-per-view porn!

Anyway, that concludes my biased and incomplete view of the US commercial space. Next episode: México!