I've always been highly susceptible to subtle visual and aural cues that guide behavior. At a self-checkout earlier this evening, I zipped through the "Pay Now" stuff and was about to leave when I heard an electronic voice say "Please remember to take your bags". The command came as I was retrieving my receipt, so my attention was elsewhere. Instinctively, I pawed open one of the plastic bags. Now, I was buying a gallon of paint and had no conscious intention of putting it in a bag. It has a handle already. I caught myself as I was lifting the can, and realized that it was the use of the word "bag" that had got me. I left the store without another bag to stuff in the kitchen drawer.
Now if the voice had said something like "Please remember to take your purchases", I would have been fine. If I was buying items too numerous to carry, I would have taken a bag through necessity. There must be some reason that the designers of the self-checkout chose the word "bag" though...right? Why are they trying to get us to take the bags?
My vote is for the advertising provided by the bag. Frequent shoppers, such as homeowners and/or parents, may have mental shopping lists represented in long-term memory by a store name or logo. Seeing the logo on a bag could easily bring the latent need to the surface and generate a shopping trip, and a few more bags.
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