Retailers have been at the forefront for understanding how to use the human brain and emotions to maximize profits from their Customers. So what can the rest of businesses learn from them?
Here are four lessons everyone can learn from a Grocery Store:
1. How it smells affects how it sells
Using smells in your Customer Experience is olfactory marketing, and it works. Smell is one of the fastest senses to process, and it is connected directly to the part of the brain that processes emotion. It’s no accident that they put the flowers right at the front of the store. They keep the baked goods right up there also. Both of these pleasant scents stimulate happy feelings and promote your desire to buy.
How you can apply it to your business:
Now we don’t all sell flowers and baked goods so that trick won’t work for everybody. Using scents to help create a positive experience for your retail customers works for many different industries though. Maybe you have a pleasant coffee scent in your bookstore or a light perfume scent in your clothing boutique. Don’t underestimate the scent in your retail experience design. We did some work for one of the Courier companies and in their retail outlets they had flowers that created an appealing scent. Some trains in England have lavender pumped into the carriages to create a calming travel experience. Disney uses Popcorn and other smells to attract people to their services. One Business-to-Business client talked to us about the smell of the engines they sell and how many Customers like that.
2. The layout is critical to appealing to our natural tendencies.
We are naturally predisposed to follow a racetrack course of the supermarket. That means that our subconscious mind automatically sends us up and down the aisles at the grocery store. BusinessInsider.com just posted a great video that demonstrates this concept. Even when you are just looking for a couple of items, you will go up and down each aisle seeing many additional items that you can add to the trolley.
How you can apply it to your business:
Depending on what you have available you can arrange the same racetrack course. Another layout might make more sense for your product or service. Even in the Business-to-business environment when getting construction equipment serviced, what is the layout of the site? A spa might have a seating arrangement that brings you closer to the spa products for sale, naturally encouraging the patrons to browse. At Disneyland, some of the flagship rides empty you right into the store full of the ride’s theme merchandise, capitalizing on the happy feelings that park guests feel as they exit. Whatever the choice you are making, use the subconscious tendencies of your experience to appeal to your patrons.
3. Consider the eye level the buy level.
Grocery stores are notorious for how they place particular products on the shelves to maximize purchases. Just ask any mother about the layout of the cereal aisle. The most sugary and expensive brands are at eye level. The healthy items and more economic items are on the top and bottom shelves, respectively.
How you can apply this to your business:
If you have items that you want your customers to see first, design the display to draw their eye there. Put the inventory you want to move where they can see it. Undertake what we call a Customer Mirror. This process is where we act as a Customer. Walk the store yourself and note where your eyes look. These are the places where your customer’s eye also looks. Once you have identified the best real estate in the store that customers look at naturally, you can stock the store accordingly.
4. Divide and conquer.
Grocery stores know that most people are there for the essentials: milk, eggs and bread. In my post, “Engaging the Subconscious Shopper,” I mention a Nielson report that reports that milk drives consumers to the store 59% of the time. So do grocery stores put the milk right up front so you can get in and out quickly? Not a chance. The milk is in the back, so you walk by many other options before you get to it—giving you many chances to buy some other things that you didn’t even know you wanted when you left for the store.
How you can apply this to your business:
Unless you sell milk, this isn’t going to work for you. You probably have an item that most of your customers do want and make the trip to your store to get. Put it in a location that gives your customers the opportunity to see all the other inventory you have that they need to see, even if you only sell online. They will subconsciously process them on the way to the item they came for and like I mentioned in my post, pick up some of them along the way.
Customer experience is largely dependent on the subconscious mind and the emotional triggers that it evokes. Grocery stores understand this. Use this information to create a great experience for your customers and your bottom line.
What else can you do to create an experience like a grocery store in your retail experience? Please share your insight in the comments below.
If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in the following blogs:
- What Does Your Experience Smell Like?
- Engaging the Subconscious Shopper
- Reverse Showrooming: How Retailers are Using Their Online Presence to Get You Back In Stores
Colin Shaw is the founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy, one of the world’s first organizations devoted to customer experience. Colin is an international author offour best-selling books and an engaging keynote speaker. To read more from Colin on LinkedIn, connect with him by clicking the follow button above or below. If you would like to follow Beyond Philosophy click here
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