So I have started to research for my practical side of COP.... I needed to do further research for my content of my book as tricks & tips was not embedded within the essay. So therefore, this is going to be a big part of my time to find out the best tricks to use within my content.
I have stumbled across a couple of programmes after deciding on my topic I started searching for information in everything I looked at and everything I watched. I work in a shop also, so I started looking at consumer behavior and how I could personally manipulate a customers decisions.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/shop-secrets-tricks-of-the-trade/4od
I watched all of these programmes after I seen one episode I thought, it was very useful and gave me a few detailed tricks that shops do. From theses I have thought about breaking down into three separate sections one in supermarkets, retail & restaurants.
I started to watch all the others on 4oD so that I could get more information here are all my notes I made...
IMAGE
Then I was watching Sunday Brunch one Sunday when Professor Charles Spence started talking about how senses influence your taste, and how restaurants play on this feature....
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/sunday-brunch/4od
Charles Spence is a guest appearance and this starts at 54:00.
These are the notes that I took from this:
The lighting & music can change the experience in the glass by 20%, based on what you hear.
Temperature, lighting & the chair will influence how long we stay within the restaurant.
See food, brain thinks should I try that immediately?
Name of dish can change expectations.
What it is served on? Shape, colour.... Black & square can make your food bitter.
Cutlery thickness, thinness shows quality and therefore you automatically think the food is better quality.
Beer, glasses gin, glass bowl. The experience can change from the atmosphere you are in and also the glass you are drinking from.
Sweet strawberry dessert on a circle dish could make it 15% sweeter and therefore they can take out sugar and still deliver the same quality and save money.
Carbonated drinks are always served in more angular glasses whereas, still water is served in more round bowl glasses.
the logo can create expectations for the beer for example Heineken has a star and therefore showing angularity, redness. This is creating an expectation of something sharp, therefore this is what you get and this is why you will like it more because you are getting what you expect.
Condiment junkie made music especially for restaurants.
I have also started to research in ways that I could hold the information without the book becoming confusing. So here are some options:
Alphabetically
Time
Location
Category
Hierarchy
Then I came across this online of A-Z retail tricks to make you shop:
A
Aisle Order
– Some customers, particularly men, tend to simply
shop for what they want, walking down an aisle grabbing what they want, turning
back and walking the way they came, this is called the 'Boomerang Effect'. In
order to maximise shopper and produce contact time, shops therefore place major
items and brands in the middle of aisles ensuring that from any direction the
customer has to walk the furthest to reach them.
B
Baby Powder
– Some UK baby shops now add Baby Powder to the air conditioning to remind
people of new born’s and relax them.
Baskets
– Shops will actively hand out baskets and trolleys to customers, as people
then feel embarrassed taking a basket with one item to the counter, and it increases
the chances of multiple purchases. You will often find baskets to the right
just after the Transition Zone.
C
Canned Smell
– Most Supermarkets bake their bread early in the morning, however to entice
more custom some have resorted to pumping out the smell of fresh baking bread
to add to the illusion that it is constantly baked through the day. Go into
Niketown on Oxford Street and smell the deodorant like pong they pump into the
air!
Curved Aisle
Ends – A lot of supermarkets now curve the ends of their aisles,
this is to ensure your eye never strays from the goods on display..
D
Displays – Displays
are now regularly put at the end of aisles so that your eyes need never be taken
from the merchandise. These are places where retailers will promote certain
items as the customer walking down an aisle will approach an end display head
on as opposed to at right angles as with the rest of the aisle.
E
Escalators
– Multi-level Department stores often use their escalators to encourage
you to see more of the store. Traveling either up or down the store you will
find you have to walk half way around the level in order to find your next connecting
escalator, as opposed to it being the one next to you. This has not happened
by accident.
F
Flooring
– Types of flooring are often used to direct customers as a retailer wants
around the store. Department stores make great use of the difference between
carpet and linoleum to subtly steer customers around and hold them in certain
places. Occasionally you will find random rugs and mats laid out in aisles of
supermarkets to slow traffic.
G
Go To The
Back –Supermarkets hit upon the idea of placing the essentials,
such as bread and milk, at the back of the shop. This is in order to make people
have to walk past the rest of the produce, and heighten the possibility of impulse
buys, in order to get their necessities. Changing rooms in clothes shops are
almost always situated at the rear of the shop.
H
Hopscotch
– One American supermarket chain hit upon the idea of drawing a hopscotch
in the aisle next to the children’s cereal in order to make the children
play and thus pin Mum & Dad to a point where the children could hassle them
for treats.
I
Irrational
Pricing - Irrational pricing is putting the price
of items at say 4.99 instead of 5. Obvious as it may seem, apparently "The
reason offered for not instead rounding $4.99 to $5.00 is based on memory processing
time. Rounding upward involves an additional decision compared with storing
the first digits. Furthermore, due to the vast quantity of information available
for consumers to process, the information on price must be stored in a very
short interval. The cheapest way to do so, in memory and attention terms, is
by storing the first digits." Therefore customers perceive to be getting
a better deal than they infact are.
J
Jumble Sale
–Retailers use the effect of a Jumble Sale on some
displays, messing them up slightly to make them look as if other customers have
been rooting through them. Shoppers are instinctively hesitant to mess up pristine
displays.
K
Kitchen Fans –
Several Fast Food restaurants have been known to re-direct the extractor fans
from their kitchens (at the back) to the street at the front of the building.
Thereby filling the surrounding area with the smell of fast food and enticing
more custom.
L
Line Of Sight
– Advertisers make great use of line of sight, by working out, or subliminally
pushing, a customer to a particular position. The customer will then find promotional
material or displays directly between them and where they wish to go, the stairs,
exit, cashier etc.
M
Mirrors
– Mirrors slow people down. Due to humans vain nature mirrors are regularly
used on the front of shops in shopping centres and high streets to slow down
the traffic and make people spend time in front of the shop. This is particularly
true if they are next to Banks which speed people up.
N
Not Closing Down –
There is a shop on Oxford Street in London which has
been having a closing down sale for the last 6 years! Advertising last minute
discounts to be made, the retailers rely upon people's instincts to catch those
bargins before the shop closes. Using our fear of missing out on a deal, they
add a sense of urgency to what is in effect a selling off of cheap stock.
O
Order Of Price-
Shops will often be laid out in order of price with the most expensive items
being encountered at the beginning of your visit and the cheapest at the end.
This is done to play on our sense of comparison, we are much more likely to spend
money on accessories etc if we have just agreed to buy an expensive item, as
in comparison they will seem cheaper than had we encountered them first.
P
Point Of Sale
- Whilst you are waiting to pay retailers often install Point Of Sale displays,
this is especially prevalent in Supermarkets who install racks of chocolate
to tempt bored children waiting with their parents.
Power Display
– Right inside the door at Gap & Old Navy, you
will find a ‘power display’, a huge horizontal bank of clothes, designed
to act as a barrier to slow shoppers down. Functioning as a speed bump this
is to shorten the length of the Transition Zone and
make people start shopping earlier.
Purple -
Apparently the colour Light Purple is most likely to make customers feel like
spending money!
Q
Queues –
Queues are a great place for retailers to add impulse buys to your basket. Point
Of Sale displays, magazine racks, chocolate and other low cost items are
often put here within easy reach of bored customers to pick up. This is also
a great place for advertisers to ply you with information on their products
as you are a captive bored market. This is used to effect anywhere a queue may
form for example by the tills, changing rooms or toilets.
R
Returns
Spiking – Blockbuster realise that when movies are popular and not
on the shelves some customers will go to the returns rack (from which the employees
stack the shelves) in order to pick up new films before they hit the shop floor.
In order to boost sales of older films, the company decided to spike the returns
rack with films that had not been hired in order to make them seem more popular.
Right –
Upon walking through the Transition Zone most customers
will veer to the right (US research). Some think it is because the majority
of people are right handed. You will therefore find a prominent display just
to the right after the Transition Zone. - As most
people are right handed, you will also find that merchandise a store is trying
to promote will be positioned just to the right of major items to that it is
within easy and natural reach.
Repetition
- Working us like Pavlov's Dogs, the cunning marketing man will use repetition
to engrain ideas into our heads, or associations between products and arousal,
i.e the constant use of beautiful women in car advertising. Plus the use of repetetive slogans on the front doors, in aisles and
then by the check out use this effect to drum ideas into our otherwise engaged
brains.
S
Seats –
Whilst installed to aid the shopper, benches also enable people to spend more
time shopping in a store, 100% of benches will be facing the merchandise. Even
within shopping centres you will find benches face shops and not the outside
world, customers must remain focussed on the shopping experience.
Shuffle
– Many shops have a poilicy of regularly rotating the stock, this happens
especially in supermarkets where people regularly shop for the same items. The
idea obviously is to confront customers with a variety of items aside from their
regulars and encourage them to explore areas of the shop they may not usually
visit.
T
Tiles –
Supermarkets used to have a trick placing slightly smaller tiles on the floor
in the more expensive aisles of the shop. When a customer entered on of these
aisles their trolley would click faster making them think they were traveling
faster and thereby subconsciously slow down and spend more time in that aisle.
Time –
The longer customers spend in a shop the more they are likely to spend. Therefore
shops work to make sure customers have to spend the maximum amount of time in
their stores, placing obstacles constantly in the way of efficient shopping.
U
Upstairs –
Shops will encourage you to enter the stores, and offer escalators up to the
floors at the front, however in order to leave you will often find that the
only route down is via stairs at the back of the store. This is to maximise
shopping time. In clothing shops, men are generally sent upstairs, and then
have to find their way back through the women’s floor to get to the front
door, usually being placed downstairs in the lingerie dept, the one place men
will impulse buy for their partners.
V
Visual Prompting
– Using the lines between laminate flooring, or carpet patterns shops often
try to guide you around as they wish. WH Smiths on Oxford Street in London has
a giant arrow cut into the carpet with laminate floor guiding you straight to
the centre of the store. Niketown also uses this idea with lines across the
floor silently ushering people.
W
Windows
– Department stores and Shopping Centres will not have many windows. Instead
they rely upon artificial light and air conditioning. This is to remove the
shopper from contact with the outside world and constraints of time (seeing
it go dark outside).
X
Xylophone
– Instore music is set at a tempo to relax customers
and slow their sense of time. Often music is wordless in order to avoid making
customers think, instead just setting the tempo of shopping.
Y
Yes – Would
you like fries with that? If an employee asks if a customer would like to upgrade
47% will say yes. Staff will often be told to keep up-selling until the customer
says no.
Z
Zone Of Transition
– The area just through the doors of a shop, which it takes a customer
to acclimatise to the shop surroundings and truly enter the shop. Merchandise,
baskets and promotions in the area are lost on the customer,
who has not fully transferred from outside yet.
This was useful information and I firstly thought about layout my book out in this order, but some of the points are not very useful and are just covering the letter rather than useful information. Therefore, i am just going to considered them into my content rather than the layout.
If I break down the information into categories then I will use block colour to make sure the division is clear.
I am now going to research into what possible layouts I could have.
This could be a possible creative style due to the personal outcome, this would give the reader some connection to be able to the trust the book and therefore this would make the information more believable.
I like the use of vibrant colours against the black bodycopy! The points could be laid out in this format although, this would leave my book with only a few pages.
This is a hardback book, I would like to bind my information in this way as this is connoting that this is a high quality of information due to the high durability. I want my publication to be seen as a high quality good read book, therefore this might be the method I use to bind mine.
I like the use of this, little captions placed around the vectors rather than the vectors been placed around the text. I like the use of the brackets surrounding the text.
The use of simple vectors are something I am been pulled towards as this has a lean and simple look, easy to follow and lots of negative space.
Although, I like the layout of this, I think it would be too daunting like someone is shouting at them rather than a title which can be developed within a small caption or you can get the jist from just the title alone.
