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Shopping Around the Edges

13 Nov 2003 by Scott Upton

I’ve always been interested by the design of stores — especially grocery stores. What’s interesting is the way people flow through these spaces to accomplish similar goals. Some people enter and glide up and down each aisle, regardless of whether they need anything in any of them. Others come with a shopping list correlating to the arrangment of the store, from entrance to exit. It takes awhile for my own personal pattern to develop for each store, but I generally follow a subconscious rule: Only shop at the periphery. I basically skip the entire core of the market and go for produce, milk, eggs, cheese, coffee, and bread (stopping, of course, for a treat here and there).

What about you — what’s your pattern? Do the folks at Safeway, Whole Foods, Kroger, etc. monitor this kind of customer behavior the way site designers test usability and user flow?

28 comments so far (Post a Comment)

13 Nov 2003 | Tornado from Scottsdale said...

Man oh man they sure do!!! If you're interested in this topic as I was you have got to read Why We Buy - Amazon link.

Basically this book discusses the patterns and methods of people who shop (not just grocery stores but also malls and airports, etc.).

Personally, at my local Safeway store I always take a pattern. Like you said, I tend to visit the outside edges of the store because I can get milk, eggs, bread, soda, and fruit and cheese and things like that. Maybe somebody who worked at a grocery store could enlighten everybody.

One last blurb: I put a bunch of links to interviews with the guy that wrote that book on my blog: BrainFuel Books

13 Nov 2003 | Don Schenck said...

My wife arranges the list in order according to the layout of the store we frequent. But we still cruise the isles; I'm the "tosser-inner of other stuff".

At the cigar shop, I shop by looking at everything. I can take 30 minutes to choose four or five cigars ... and love every second of it.

13 Nov 2003 | Steve Hoffman said...

They definitely pay attention to this in minute detail. Didn't you ever wonder why the eggs and milk are ALWAYS in the back of the store? This way if you're just running to pick up those staples, you'll always pass by the maximum amount of shelf space.

By the way, I agree with "Tornado" above. "Why We Buy" is a great book on this topic and should be required reading for anyone working in user experience/usability.

13 Nov 2003 | sergio said...

I look for the aisle that has the signs for each corridor (the ones that indicate what you can find there) and go up and down entering the corridors for the stuff I need only. I have an almost pathological need to negotiate as little distance as I can in between items.

Then I get the hell out of the store. Can't stand stores.

13 Nov 2003 | jupiter said...

I read "Why we buy" too and it's amazing. When I walk through a store now, I see things I never really noticed before. I even caught myself thinking about why they put something on this place and not elsewhere and how they could do it better...

I bought the book to learn more about bricks-and-mortar merchandizing and then applying some of the lessons to our online-store, but a lot of things are hard to transfer. Don't think that it would be a good idea to make items hard to find with the intention to give visitors the opportunity to maximize page impressions (=pass by the maximum amount of shelf space). Has anyone good examples of real-world merchandizing strategies which are valid for online-shopping?

13 Nov 2003 | jupiter said...

Oh...and yes, Don - my wife does these layout-optimized shopping lists, too. Think we have to admin they're the experts in lean-management...so I follow an push the cart!

13 Nov 2003 | Benjy said...

I also endorse reading "Why We Buy." I read it last year and found it to be very insightful as to how we shop, how store payout affect this, and how minute differences can make/break a store's success. Since reading the book, I constantly find myself analyzing store in which I shop.

When grocery shopping, I tend to go up and down every aisle in the store, except for the last two which house the pet food, cleaning supplies and paper goods--only need to hit those every couple months.

A thought I actually had on Monday while grocery shopping is "how do they decide what gets grouped in each aisle?" I mean some are obvious, other items are less obvious. For example, where does honey appear on the shelves? Near the other sweeteners (sugar, Equal, etc.), near the syrups, or near the Jams and jellies? I hit all three locations trying to find it. And I can't remember which location it was in 3 days later, so the next time I buy honey in 6 or 8 months it'll be the same hunt. I remember similar hunts for roasted red peppers and bread crumbs. And are the locations even consistent from store to store or chain to chain?

In terms of user experience, could stores boost sales if they put products in multiple locations? I remember the Harris Teeter chain when I lived in Atlanta would have coolers within some of the dry good aisles, ie. milk in the middle of the cereal aisle; shredded cheese and sour cream in the Mexican foods aisle...

13 Nov 2003 | kyle said...

Colors magazine had something on this a few years back. I took note, because I worked for many many years in a few different grocery stores.

Produce is usually by the entrance because it's more inviting for customers. Some stores pump the smell of fresh bread into the air. The lighting is also adjusted to provide minimum blinking (the less you blink, the more you see). Then of course there's the more obvious things like making sure the "kid's cereal" is at eye level with the kids sitting in their cart and the dairy department being located in the corner opposite the entrance (which was already mentioned).

13 Nov 2003 | mark said...

I hate my local Wallmart (in Mexico). Reaching the food is just a matter of turning right and going through the check out lines. On the front there's a very wide and inviting corridor through the electronics department and to the longest possible way to reach the food.

A friend's father does this for a living, but he doesn't does it just for supermarkets, he can layout a warehouse in the most efficient way. When he told me that I thought he had the most interesting job in the world.

13 Nov 2003 | One of several Steves said...

I used to know someone who worked for a location and retail consultancy. The location bit was where to put stores, restaurants, etc. They're as responsible as anyone, developers included, for why in the suburbs you'll find massive conglomerations of restaurants surrounding colonies of big-box retailers. A huge amount of restaurant traffic is impulse, either which restaurant to eat at or even the desire to eat out after a long day of shopping, which is why all the restaurants are in the same area.

Retail layout's a finely tuned science. The thing with eggs and milk at the back have already been pointed out. But notice a couple other things: most stores have the frozen foods aisles right up the middle - one of the most-trafficked routes to the milk and eggs, and some of the more profitable foods (anything that's pre-prepared and just microwavable typically has higher margins than "raw material" foods). But, also notice that the outsides of the store are often filled with other high-profit items - beverages, meats, deli. They know that a lot of people run to the back around the outside as well.

Then there are placement ("slotting") fees paid by food manufacturers to get end caps, eye-level shelf space, etc. (Eye-level shelfs contain the highest-profit items; bottom and upper shelves, which most people never noticed, are reserved for low-margin items.)

It's all quite fascinating stuff.

13 Nov 2003 | dez said...

Harris Teeter is great and it seems they're really trying to innovate the shopping process more than others. The milk in a cooler unit in the middle of the cereal aisle is my favorite, but I've heard that they are having real trouble with people embracing the 2 level supermarket.

13 Nov 2003 | Chris from Scottsdale said...

Something else that always bugs me is when they don't have baskets at the back of the store.

In Why We Buy, Underhill explains that when people enter a grocery store, or a mall, or almost any store they "breeze" past the first 10-15 feet and don't see anything. So they advise store owners to place baskets about 15-20 feet "in." otherwise people turn around to look for them.

13 Nov 2003 | Benjy said...

Something else that always bugs me is when they don't have baskets at the back of the store.

I am amazed at how poorly the Dominick's chain in Chicago places the backets. This is one of those key things I have begun to analyze since reading "Why We Buy." The one near my office only keeps them in one location despite having 5 entry locations into the store, and the only way to reach them from 3 of the entrances is to cut through the checkouts. The one closer to home has then sitting tucked back to the side of the in-store Starbucks, a location one wouldn't venture towards unless getting some coffee before shopping. Additionally, no Dominick's I've been into has baskets located towards the rear of the store.

Why is basket placement so important? It has a dramatic effect on sales. If one grabs a basket then they are more likely to pick up additional items that they wouldn't were they trying to balance everything in their arms. And who doesn't run in for "1 or 2" things and end up having to bypass the express lanes alltogether from time to time? But one's less likely to do so without a basket. And who tends to use baskets? Singles--with smaller shopping lists-- but who tend also to buy more of the higher margin items such as prepared foods, gourmet/organic foods, beer & wine, etc.

And Dominick's blames their poor financials on an overly generous union contract. Whatever!

13 Nov 2003 | Rob said...

Of course they monitor how people shop. There was a show on Discovery Channel about a year ago where they studied how people shop in grocery stores. Basically, most people roam the aisle like zombies and are in a trance when they shop, un aware they are doing so.

The noted psychologist Benjamin Skinner observed that rats in a maze tend to take the same path to the food every time. If that path is changed, the rats have a period of confusion and frustration as they attempt to take the old established route. The same psychology applies to customers at a grocery store. People develop a natural flow direction while shopping, but the supermarket helps create that flow by positioning the shelves much like the maze walls in Skinner's experiments. You are naturally directed to move to the right of the checkout counters, then you progress down the aisles in a routine order. Rarely will a shopper change this pattern once it has developed. The items you are most likely to buy tend to be on the righthand of the aisle as you progress down. Most of the sale items are on the lefthand side, to help move the less popular items.

13 Nov 2003 | dayvin said...

The items you are most likely to buy tend to be on the righthand of the aisle as you progress down. Most of the sale items are on the lefthand side, to help move the less popular items.

What grocery store has one-way aisles?

13 Nov 2003 | Mike D. said...

My biggest supermarket design pet-peeve is when they throw diagonal and otherwise irregular-shaped aisles all over the place in hopes of getting you to "explore". It's a terrible terrible idea. You end up leaving the store not entirely sure if you've covered all the ground and passed by everything you might need.

The crappy part about this situation for me is that I only shop at our best market, and our best market happens to be the only market which imposes this design on its customers.

13 Nov 2003 | Benjy said...

What grocery store has one-way aisles?

I didn't think they did either, but I got yelled at by an elderly women a few weeks ago for "going the wrong way" down the aisle. I didn't see any arrows or One Way signs...

13 Nov 2003 | One of several Steves said...

My biggest supermarket design pet-peeve is when they throw diagonal and otherwise irregular-shaped aisles all over the place in hopes of getting you to "explore".

My biggest pet peeve is the index signage on the aisles. A lot of stores do not have the same items listed on both ends of the aisle, but only the items down at that particular end. Many is the time I've been looking for a specific item and wandered the full width of the store not finding it, only to go down to the other end of the aisles to find it listed there. Some of these stores have gotten so huge you can't read the sign down at the other end of the aisle. Put the full index on each aisle's signage at both ends.

13 Nov 2003 | Eccentric Gardener said...

Put the full index on each aisle's signage at both ends.

Our local Copps Food Centers have full store directories at the ends of each aisle with an alphabetical list of the main product groups and their locations in the store. You're always within no more than half an aisle of knowing where to find whatever it is you want. Forget the overhead signs! There's no need to look up.

It's really helpful for those shoppers who don't want to explore the whole place and who don't want to play the aisle-by-aisle sign game.

14 Nov 2003 | Benjy said...

We've been doing a lot of grocery store bashing here, but I have a commendation for one. On the way home from work, I decided to check out the new Clybourn Ave. Trader Joe's, in part because I'd heard a commerical on the radio this morning discussing some wine that sounded interesting. In the store, they had bright yellow stickers on the display for that particular wine--as well as on other products--stating that they were the products advertised on the radio. This was great!

14 Nov 2003 | Arthur said...

It's nice to see people here not be cynical about the stores and their sophisticated arrangement of products. It's no different to other forms of human behavior, and so it's quite natural to have some tempting stuff both right up front for temptation - but also hidden at the back of the store as reward for "adventure". Why would they design these stores in any other way?

Supermarkets are one of the most incredibly amazing things about the modern world: consider the logistics of delivery and inventory, the infrastructure of buyers and other specialized professions; and finally consider that they typically make 5 percent or less markup on average for what they sell. I defy anyone who frequents this forum to tell me they have a more complex job than the management of a big supermarket chain.

14 Nov 2003 | drew said...

There's also some pretty good coverage of this (beyond supermarkets) in douglas rushkoff's Coercion., which has somewhat more of a snide take on it.

I enjoy Trader Joe's - I like the diagonal aisles and low shelves, they provide much better sight lines.

14 Nov 2003 | Michael Spina said...

Best idea I saw for in-store navigation (for a Redner's grocery store) was a plastic map of all the major sections (deli, pasta, cereal, etc.) attached right to the handle of the cart.

14 Nov 2003 | drew said...

I find that my shopping pattern depends on how much time I have on my hands.

I'f I have alot of time regardless of a shopping list or not, I tend to wander the whole store side to side front to back, taking the things on my list and maybe some things I forgot but were spurred to remember by seeing them.

if I have no time then I tend to rush around the store not neccessarily in the most orderly fashion.

as an added comment, here in toronto the new thing is 24 hour grocery stores, this is great for the late night shopping which I find considerbly better than say shopping even during off peak hours.

14 Nov 2003 | Chris from Scottsdale said...

I'm so used to 24 hour grocery stores that when I travel to rural towns I forget and for some reason always want to go get something at night.

19 Nov 2003 | Todd Warfel said...

Well, this is pretty interesting. This year I worked on a project for a very large grocery chain. During the research phase, we did some very extensive ethnographic research into people's grocery shopping habits - from planning, to purchase, to putting it all away at the end. We studied two different markets, 10 people total. We found some very interesting results - three basic type of shoppers, three basic methods. And then singles were in a class all by themselves.

Additionally, grocers do pay attention to shopping patterns. And they, the larger chains at least, do try and optimize the stores for typical shopping behaviors.

25 Nov 2003 | Andy Warwick said...

Can't remember where I read it, but the science of grocery shopping is so advanced that in some stores they even alter the size of the tiles in aisles with high profit goods (usually meats), so that the 'clack-clack' of the basket wheels alters in speed, and you subconciously slow down.

I've even seen footage of a research scientist doing a standard shop wearing one of those eye-tracking headsets attached to a computer in his basket. Later they would analyse how his vision scanned the shelves, so that own-brand items could be placed in prime positions.

Cool stuff.

26 Nov 2003 | Richard Bird said...

As soon as it becomes apparent that shoppers have adopted a pattern, it will be changed.

The goal is to disorient (manipulate) the shopper, so as to force them to explore.

Did you ever notice how all the "up" escalators are on one end of the shop... and the "down" escalators are on the other side?

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