http://forpsych.eu/psychology-in-practise/66-consumer-environment/160-the-supermarket-landscape
The layout of a supermarket is not random. Retail managers have to take into account how the arrangement of products, brands, in-store advertising etc. impacts on consumers. The influence may be a physical one in terms of how customers are ‘guided’ around the aisles and at what speed (e.g. Levy and Weitz, 1998). The spatial behaviour of in-store consumers is also important at a psychological level because an experience of ‘being rushed’, ‘feeling pressured’, ‘getting lost or confused’ or ‘feeling crowded’ will have negative consequences on immediate sales and future planned visits. The ‘atmosphere’ of the store and aesthetics of the shelf and end-of-aisle displays are also considerably influenced by how and where products are arranged and stacked (e.g. Herbert et al, 2002; Jansson, 2004; Jansson & Marlow, 2005; Jansson-Boyd & Marlow, 2007).
Initially, it made sense for supermarkets to arrange the display of products in terms of global categorisations based upon product characteristics and functionality. This practice gave rise to products being displayed guided by a conceptual plan similar in style to the basic flora and fauna taxonomies e.g.
1. All living organisms are divided into 5 Kingdoms; then the Kingdom is divided into smaller groups called Phyla (singular) or Phylum (plural); these in turn are further divided into smaller groups called Classes. Classes are divided into Orders; then Families followed by division into Genera (plural for Genus) and finally a number of Species.
This classification system has produced the supermarket layout that is familiar today: fruit and vegetables; ready meals; tinned meat and fish; cereals; washing powder; wine & spirits etc. This organization of goods seems logical because it follows larger groupings down to smaller groupings, which is probably the way our brain categorises and classes most objects in the environment, (e.g. Cohen & Lefebvre, 2005), through classical hierarchical categorization. When the supermarket plan matches the consumers’ internal representation, it is possible for individuals to subconsciously make a match of both external and inner maps, and therefore know where to go throughout the store to find products without having to consciously pay attention to way-finding. This is important for business, as over 80% of purchase decisions in supermarkets are taken at the subconscious level, and every measure should be taken to maintain the ‘shopping-trance’.
Store signage thus becomes more like ‘aide-memoires’ to prompt and remind consumers of other classes of products that they may have missed out on, rather than being actual directional commands to follow. They are gentle nudges to arouse interest or curiosity. This raises the possibility that any major change in store layout could have a negative effect on customer experience and subsequently affect sales negatively. “A conscious customer is a careful customer!”
However, the hierarchical, logical categorization of merchandise is not the only blue-print followed by supermarkets when planning the layout of their precious floor-space. Experience and some insights into the psychology of consumers have allowed some shuffling of the arrangements, which have now been adopted by most chains. In order to provoke a feeling of ‘freshness and healthiness’ in the minds of consumers, the first categories that greet the shopper are the fresh vegetables and fruit. This feeling will have a ‘halo-effect’ that will colour the consumers’ impression of the rest of the journey through the store and add towards building a positive experience.
Another near universal strategy is to locate the staple household requirement such as bread and milk at the rear of the shop floor:
“A classic retailing trick is to locate the milk and bread at the very back of the store (often at either end) to encourage short-term shoppers to walk through the shop and be tempted by other, more expensive products along the way.” (Browne 2010, p 61)
Retail spaces are designed to give consumers a pleasant shopping experience but in the background are subtle design features that are associated with in-store marketing and the attempt to get shoppers to spend (more than planned). Increasingly, every aspect of store-design is calculated to have a physical or psychological influence on consumer behaviour.
An example of an environmental cue to prompt physical behaviour begins at the start of the shopping journey with the positioning of the entrance on the right-hand side of the shop. Behavioural research has shown that the majority of shoppers will immediately turn right on entering a store and then continue their shopping following an anti-clockwise path around the periphery. This allows supermarkets to plan their merchandise displays and in-store advertising taking this into account; it has also been shown that when travelling in an anti-clockwise direction, customers tend to spend more, Browne (2010).
2. Walden & Marlow (2013) : http://www.beyondphilosophy.com/blogs/new-customer-experience-research-tools-measuring-customer-subconscious-with-neural-network-analysis
The retail space is carefully designed territory with psychological triggers that prompt certain perceptions and emotions in customers. The sensory information being transmitted is subtle, often in the background, and is being interpreted at a subconscious level by the consumer. All the sensory channels are employed from lighting levels, colour and shape; soothing background music; through to artificially generated smells of fresh bread and coffee, (Gajanayakeet al, 2011). Even the sense of touch has been investigated as a channel influencing consumer experience, (Jansson-Boyd & Marlow, 2007; Marlow & Jansson-Boyd, 2011).
The layout of even the largest of floor space is designed to give the consumer a sense of visiting a number of individual, smaller, local markets. Each major product section is made to look as unique as possible with its own ‘atmosphere’ created by the use of different lighting levels and hues, display arrangements, floor coverings and the presence of individual assistants (e.g. at the delicatessen section).
A more obvious artifact of shelve displays is that those brands at consumers’ eye-level are located earlier in any search of a particular product category; they are handled more frequently; and subsequently have higher sales. The ends of aisle are also ‘eye-catching’:
“The ends of the row are often the most profitable area for product manufacturers and they often pay a premium to have their product placed there. These displays also act as a welcome mat to lure shoppers further down the aisle.” (Browne 2010, p. 63).
The end of aisle displays near the check-out tills and the ends of the till-islands themselves are used to display last-minute, ‘impulse-buy’ products.
“Last-minute temptations such as chocolates, lollies, magazines and cold drinks are all located here to entice bored, tired shoppers (and their children) while they wait to be served.” (Browne 2010, p. 63).
Aghazedah (2005) outlines three heuristics that supermarket designers’ use as a guide at their planning stage and store managers later use in their efforts to maximize sales from their limited floor space. The circulation of the shopper-traffic is of primary importance. The ‘high-roads’ within the store are established by the positioning of high draw brands in separate and spread-out locations. . High impulse and high margin products are placed in areas most likely to attract the attention of customers and entice them down and along the aisles.
The second ‘rule-of-thumb’ is co-ordination. This is a strategy of positioning fast-selling brands alongside slow-selling ones in order to encourage some collateral purchasing. And finally, the third guiding principle is that of customer convenience. The supermarket wants its customers to have a pleasant experience whilst shopping. This not only encourages consumers to experiment with new buys, therefore increasing sales, it also helps ensure return visits.
However, these heritage principles that guide the traditional approach of product layout and display are being supplemented and improved upon by applying knowledge of cross-utilities. Certain products are placed together or near one another that are of a similar or complementary nature to increase the average customer spend. This strategy is used by retailers to create ‘cross-category sales similarity; for example tooth paste is next to tooth brushes and tea and coffee are close to biscuits (Bezawanda et al, 2009). Products, such as camera and film, oil and vinegar, which are used in a complementary way or are somehow interdependent, can be displayed ‘side-by-side’. This ‘togetherness’ association can be a Use Association (UA) or Buying Association (BA), (Walters, 1991).
The Use Association (UA) is the relationship among two or more products that meet specific consumer need by their functional characteristics. The relationship between the products can be one of substitution, independence or complementary (Walters, 1991).
The Buying Association (BA) is the relationship among products or brands established by consumer behaviour, through their purchases. UA depends upon the product functional characteristics, whilst BA is more dependent on associations that can be symbolic (psychological) generated by brand imagery, media salience and other marketing strategies.
Some retailers are trying to move from the ‘product categorization’ approach and become more consumer-centric in their store layout planning (Shahidi, 2002). This idea of clustering products within ‘BA bundles’ thus sees products such as coffee, cereals, bread, marmalade etc. displayed together in a ‘Breakfast Section’; wine, savoury biscuits, cheese, pickles etc. displayed together in an ‘Entertainment Section’. The product clusters are thus ‘bundles of meaning’ that make sense to the consumer.
Adilson Borges points out the dangers in over-reliance of this theoretical ‘conjoint’ buying; because associated brands will have differing buying time cycles. His approach is one of using hard data, and using data-mining techniques to analyse actual shopping baskets and therefore base the cluster-layouts on consumer buying habits.
The author’s opinion is that these background ‘hard’ sales statistics should be borne in mind but in terms of supermarket ‘atmosphere’ and the customer experience; the psychological clustering approach seems to offer a more insightful solution. After all, Sliced white bread; Ready salted crisps; Minced beef steak; Tinned chopped tomatoes; and Chocolate wafer biscuits all feature in one supermarket’s ‘best seller’ list , but displayed as a cluster……?
3. These ‘bundles’ are psychological phenomenon and do not exist outside the minds of the consumer. They are maps of association that have to be explored and understood by techniques that can access subconscious processes, (see Walden & Marlow, 2013) : http://www.beyondphilosophy.com/blogs/new-customer-experience-research-tools-measuring-customer-subconscious-with-neural-network-analysis
4. http://industrial.betsa.googlepages.com/supermarketlayoutdatamining.pdf.
5. Telegraph, March 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8053684/Mince-tea-white-bread-Britains-unsophisticated-shopping-basket.html
REFERENCES
Aghazedah, S. (2005). Layout strategies for retail operations. Management Research News, vol. 28, no. 10, pp. 31-46.
Browne, K. (2010). Trolley psychology: Choice unlocks the psychological secrets of the supermarket and shows you how to avoid spending more than you mean to. Choice, No.4, April, pp. 60-64. Australasian Consumers’ Association, NSW, Australia.
Cohen, H., & Lefebvre, C. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science. Elsevier.
Gajanayake, R., Gajanayake, S. & Surangi, H. (2011). The impact of selected visual merchandising techniques on patronage intentions in supermarkets. International Conference on Business and Economic Research, p1130-1165. (also see: http://www.nacsonline.com/NACS/MAGAZINE/PASTISSUES/2011/october2011/Pages/Feature13.aspx)
Herbert, E., Jansson, C., Bointon, B., & Marlow N. (2002). Determinants of consumers’ aesthetic responses to Point-of-Purchase materials. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 26, 145-153.
Jansson, C. (2004). Aesthetics in retail environments: Examining the role of colour in the retail environment. Presentation made at the Society of Chemical Industries, London.
Jansson, C. & Marlow, N. (2005) Discovering what really connects with your consumers in the big, bright and flashy world of the retail environment. Presentation made at Packaging Design in Food and Drink, Marketing Week conference, London.
Jansson-Boyd, C.V. & Marlow, N. (2007) Role of colour in aesthetic evaluation. PsychEXTRA. Abstract.
Jansson-Boyd, C.V. & Marlow, N. (2007) Not only in the eye of the beholder: Tactile information can affect aesthetic evaluation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, 1, 170-173.
Levy, M., Weitz, B. (1998) Retailing Management. 3ed. Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Marlow, N. & Jansson-Boyd, C.V. (2011). To touch or not to touch; that is the question. Should consumers always be encouraged to touch products, and does it always alter product perception? Psychology & Marketing, 28, 256-266.
Shahidi, A. (2002) The End of Supermarket Lethargy : Awakened Consumers and Select Innovators to Spur Change. Supermarket Industry Perspective, http://www.bearingpoint.com/industries/consumer_and_industrial_markets/pdfs/Supermkt_Industry_POV_Final.pdf
Walters, R.G. (1991) Assessing the impact of retail price promotions on product substitution, complementary purchase, and interstore sales displacement. Journal of Marketing. 55, 1, 17-28.