I feel like I read about some of this stuff when I read Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice a few years back. So it wasn't a complete surprise to me to know that grocery stores have a specific pattern and layout to encourage the buyer to purchase the highest amount of goods per trip. It's not too different from the things I've heard about American mall layouts and how escalators and elevators are often positioned opposite or far from each other so that customers have to walk past other things to get to their intended destination.
I do wonder though if online sales of groceries have hit these grocery stores hard. With Fresh Direct and Amazon groceries, do online product recommendations translate to the same dollar amount sales as perfect aisle placement?