Your Floor Plan is part of your Marketing

Before leaving for vacation earlier this month, I was out doing some errands and my wife called asking me to pick up some chili beans for the meal she was going to prepare. Simple enough, just stop by the grocery store and pick up a can or two.

Problem began when I walked in and was handed a map by one of the clerks. I looked around and there were dozens of other zombie-like shoppers pushing carts and looking at their maps with a look of angst on their faces.

Turns out, I was about to become one of them.

Turns out, the store was rearranging their isles and inventory so that all the stores in the chain would have the same floor plan.

Turns out that there were four different isles that carried beans, maybe more.

Turns out I finally found the kind of beans my wife wanted after about 25 minutes and asking a couple of stockers, who didn't know either.

I left with my two cans of chili beans and hope that now that it's two weeks later, they have things back in place, where ever that place is.

How about your store? Is the floor plan designed to sell or annoy your customers?

Read this from my email:

Get in the Mood to Shop

Stores invest a great deal of time and attention in determining the best way to design floor space and shelving to create the optimal customer experience. Research shows that understanding customers' motivation for visiting your store should affect its design.

Customers who see shopping as a form of recreation—something that is fun—prefer highly arousing environments. This might include warm, saturated or bright colors, fast-paced music and complex layouts that provide lots of product stimulation. These customers won't mind if you frequently reorganize the store's layout and displays.

Shoppers who arrive with a clear task in mind—such as buying a specific item—prefer a more subdued environment. They don't want to be distracted from their mission. These customers prefer simple merchandise presentation and cooler, less saturated colors such as light blue.

How do you satisfy both types of customers? Wall color and overall layout are the elements most difficult to change, so design these to create moderate arousal. Use more stimulating elements—such as background music—when customers are likely to be recreational shoppers, such as on weekends. If the type of shopper varies by department, design each area so that it complements the reason most shoppers go to that section.

The Po!nt: Contented customers buy more. When creating or changing the décor of a store, it is important to consider the type of customers who frequent the store and their primary motivation for shopping.

Source: "When Should a Retailer Create an Exciting Store Environment?" by Velitchka D. Kaltcheva and Barton A. Weitz, Journal of Marketing, 2006. Read a PDF of the article here.

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