“A new feeling of passion”

The self-service shops revolutionised the entire shopping experience. Customers were overwhelmed by the abundance of goods and the sudden explosion in variety. With such a bounty of desirable products, they almost didn’t know which way to look.
When Migros opens its first self-service shop in 1948, the Second World War, with its desperate product shortages, is only three years past and the last rationing measures have just been discontinued. After so recently experiencing shortages and scarcity, the people are extremely impressed by the goods they find in the self-service shops: “Many people explain that they actually feel passion when they are shopping, something which they have never before experienced,” says Migros’ annual report. The goods are to hand, the barrier of the sales counter has disappeared and the customer can “so to speak, move around in the display window themselves”. And they can take what they want. As the Familie M image film puts it so well: “Instead of a prohibition sign, the new motto is: please touch!” Shopping is made even more attractive by the fact that the range is more extensive than in the smaller full-service shops. And the experience is made yet more appealing by the mirrors above the shelves that seem to multiply the range of products. The retailers’ association, which rarely has a good word to say about Migros, even comments that the mirrors simulate “an enormous stock”. Where there is a new passion for shopping, temptation lurks: “Do not grasp for the peaches when it is peas you want, curb your for pineapple when you intend to buy jam,” warns the Brückenbauer in an article about the first self-service shop. Helpfully, it advises “planned shopping” with the aid of a shopping list: “It is a type of character training to stand in front of the shelves with the tasty tins, and you can also school your character where the bars of chocolate are stacked in towers.” And so this paradise of excess quickly turns into a place where one must learn “to overcome temptation”.