How Costco Hacked the American Shopping Psyche
The New York Times
More than 100 million people visit the retailer for their groceries — and gas and TVs and gold bars and pet coffins — but saving money may not be the only motive.
When it opened in 1984, the Costco on West Dimond Boulevard in Anchorage did not seem like the future of food. A glorified shed the color of stale coffee, the warehouse offered the sort of products and deals Alaskans go crazy for: mammoth quantities of staples like peanut butter and tomato sauce, along with local favorites such as caribou sausage. The state’s extreme environment and the need to travel hours or even days for groceries made it a hit right off the bat.
Today the parking lot, full of jacked-up, Thuled-out 4x4s on studded tires and mobile homes that look more like mobile fortresses, has a bit of an edge for a grocery store. There’s something edgy about the inventory, too: neoprene survival suits, meat grinders, gun safes.
Inside the vast store, overloaded shopping carts seemingly pilot themselves down the aisles. One was pushed by Gabriella Pelesasa, a teenager who was buying, among other things, a pair of whole pigs, at 45 pounds each.
As her sister sat on the cart eating a Costco hot dog, Ms. Pelesasa reported simply, “They have bigger versions of what we want.”
Though the Anchorage location, one of the retailer’s first, once seemed like a survivalist outlier, today it shows how visionary Costco was.
