The Psychology of Shopping / At your Leisure - 14 March 2005

At your Leisure - 14 March 2005

The Psychology of Shopping


Image copyright: Lotus Head, stock.xchng

The 1970s giants of retailing made it their business to 'pile it high, sell it cheap'. Organisations such as Tesco and Walmart made their names by following this policy. The thinking was that consumers would buy as long as they believed they were getting cheap prices and that the goods were of reasonable quality.

In the past thirty years, retailers have become increasingly sophisticated in their methods of parting consumers from their money. In grocery markets, shops have used a range of techniques to create the right conditions psychologically for consumers to buy what the retailers want them to buy: the aroma of freshly-baked bread is often wafted through a supermarket in order to stimulate demand for products from the in-store bakery, or just to make shoppers feel hungry.

But what other methods are there? Where is the limit to the use of psychological techniques in retailing? How can store design be used to maximise revenues? This 'At your Leisure' takes a look at the retail experience presented to UK shoppers and how the use of space can be applied to the design of the urban environment. It also analyses how one retail giant, IKEA, has harnessed some of these psychological techniques in its store design. Finally we ask whether some of IKEA's marketing techniques may call into question their ability to ensure the safety of their customers.

What psychological techniques are in use?


Image: Products with the highest margins are stocked at eye-level in supermarkets. Copyright: Dan Tinianow, stock.xchng

Shopping is a major leisure activity. Try asking many people what they like to do in their spare time and you can guarantee that a large number of them will nominate a trip to their local mall. Why is this? What do we get out of the shopping experience? Is it all about the therapeutic benefit of buying a product or service that we desperately want? Or are other forces at work when we enter the shopping centre? Let's look at some standard techniques which have long been seen as successful in retail markets. Examples of these include the following:

Pricing at psychologically sensitive points, for example at £29.99
Locating so-called 'anchor' stores in malls/shopping arcades, attracting people into the mall and increasing sales throughout the centre by boosting footfall to other stores
Additionally, the benefits of using so-called 'shelf psychology' are applied widely by high street retailers:

Products identified by the retailer as impulse buys are placed at the ends of aisles
Own-brand products are positioned alongside premium brands, often leading to consumers buying a cheaper choice own-brand item rather than a premium priced one
Stacking the products with the highest margins (products with the greatest difference between cost to retailer and revenue gained from selling it to a consumer) at eye-level, as it is known that consumers are more likely to buy products in their line of sight
Retail business organisations also try to gain benefit by designing the shopping experience in order to maximise revenue. They often base this policy on some well-known features of human psychology, namely that:

We are more at ease when shopping in or walking through urban areas when others are around us
The routes we use follow clear lines of sight
These features mean that urban areas where it's hard to see from one point to another are avoided by shoppers. As a psychological response to these conditions, we simply don't want to be there. Left as they are, these areas will wither and die.

What does this mean for UK urban areas?

Use of innovative techniques of urban design to create better, more attractive and safer places
A company at the forefront of this work is Space Syntax Limited whose techniques were developed at University College London and commercially 'spun out' as an urban environment consultancy
The company's methods can be used to breath new life into areas and can be applied to towns and cities and their retail or historical centres
Projects that Space Syntax have been involved in include the Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London

Image: The Millennium Bridge between Tate Modern and St Paul's, London. Copyright: mmuzxer, stock.xchng

What of the out-of-town shops, the carpet warehouses, furniture showrooms and electrical superstores?

They tend to adopt similar techniques, but in these locations which are often on main trunk roads and motorways, the car is king
This is especially true where consumers have no choice but to transport their purchases home themselves
Some of these businesses have successfully combined the techniques of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) markets with selling larger, traditionally higher value products. One of the best examples of this is IKEA.