After lunch, we took a field trip to Costco and the Co-op to compare their consumption/sales environments. It was fun, and surprisingly telling! I noticed right away that the Costco manager did not look the students in the eye. Even when I asked him a question, he only talked to the adults. At the Co-op, the salespeople treated us as equals. This was probably since the Co-op constantly gets business from teenagers, while Costco mostly caters to adults.

Another comparison I made (besides the obvious price and quality comparisons) was the atmosphere of both stores -- Costco was not as "human friendly" as the Co-op. It was much bigger, less efficient (the huge heating fans right by the open doors) and there were less salespeople to help customers. At the Co-op, the area was extremely small (but they are planning on re-modeling to fix their space restrictions), much less organized, and there seemed to be more salespeople willing to help cutomers find products, etc. However, that is why these two stores are on opposite ends of the spectrum -- Costco as a large, bulk food store aimed at masses of consumers, and the Co-op as a smaller, local health food store aimed at local members (most of the time).

Overall, I found this field trip to be helpful in our project and I hope that our findings at both of these stores will be helpful in our future explorations.