Retail Store Design

Retail Store Design

Questions on My Mind about the Psychology of Retail Store Design

  1. What are the most effective psychological states for retailers to target to get customers in the door? For example, whether a place feels friendly, inviting, or exclusive. Or if it makes passersby feel curious or playful.
  2. How has scent been used to entice potential customers? I think the concept of olfactory marketing is fascinating. Like how realtors bake cookies to make a home feel cozier or how cars have the new car smell. I wonder what the most effective uses of this strategy have been. Also, what would it look like to olfactory brand ourselves or our homes?
  3. What’s the psychology of window displays? Window displays are like the YouTube video thumbnail of a retail space. I once heard youtuber say how putting weird items in their thumbnail increases their click-through rate. I wonder if that works for window displays too. Do stores put their window displays through A/B tests? What sort of window display would pull me into a store I’ve never been to before?
  4. What’s the effectiveness of different types of brand signs (ways of displaying a brand name outside of a store)? Some signs are above the store. Some projected onto the sidewalk. Some hanging on a signpost by the front door. Some printed onto the glass window. Similar to how we attribute different personalities to types of font, maybe we also attribute different personalities to different types of signs.
  5. What strategies are used in positioning products within the stores? Like how a bunch of cheap candies and sensationalized magazines are placed near the cash registers of grocery stores, what other strategies use positioning to influence our psychology?
  6. What effect do greeters and sales associates have on customers? Imagine a sales associate coming up to you and asking “can I help you find anything?” vs a sales associate greeting you at the door saying “welcome, lemme know if I can help you find anything”. In the first we likely respond “no thank you, I’m just looking” and in the second we say “thank you”. I wonder if being put in a position to say “no thank you” vs “thank you” affects our level of comfort.
  7. How does the placement of the cash register influence customers? Some stores have their cash register at the farthest distance from the exit and others have them right next to the exit. I wonder if there are any implications for each.
  8. What similarities are there between casino designs and retail stores? Casinos implement a ton of psychological strategies to get people spending money. I wonder if retailers could / have benefited from any of those tactics too.
  9. What’s the effectiveness of combining different types of stores within a location? For example, bookstores that also have a coffee shop. Similarly, are there types of stores that increase the likelihood of customer’s browsing through nearby locations? Like, I wonder if opening up a coffee shop next to a bookstore increases the coffee shop’s traffic.
  10. What makes an un-ideal retail location? I’ve noticed some spaces seem to be cursed. A store seems to be in a high traffic spot, but time after time it is replaced by a new business.
  1. How are experiential and immersive tactics used in retail? How does music, media displays (ex. tv), interactive elements, and free samples influence customer satisfaction?
  2. What are the most outrageous grand openings that have taken place? I wonder if the grandiosity of a store’s grand opening correlates with their long-term success.
  3. How do price displays influence customer behaviour and satisfaction? I wonder about the psychology behind things like boxing day behaviour. I also wonder if customers feel more at ease in stores that include taxes in the price displayed on the items.
  4. How do stores design around potential theft? I’ve noticed some places posting pictures of past thieves by their front door. Aside from physical barriers, like putting items behind glass, what psychological tactics do stores use to dissuade theft. Real or fake surveillance cameras, for example.
  5. How do retailers use demographic information to influence their in-store design and location decisions? Would a retailer design the interior of 2 of its stores differently if they had one location on a college campus and another on an expensive street.
  6. What dark design patterns are used in retail stores? Dark patterns in user interfaces are designs that have been crafted to trick users into doing things that are not in their best interest. Maybe an example of this would be putting cheap unhealthy treats along waiting lines to get to the checkout.
  7. How is hostile architecture incorporated into retail store designs? Hostile architecture are strategies designed to stop people from using spaces in “undesirable” ways. Thinking about the Abercrombie and Fitch documentary on Netflix, perhaps an example of this is how they designed their stores to exclude their unideal customers.
  8. What are the most innovative stores today? Thinking about tech for example, a lot of stores are self-checkout now and I’d suspect the majority of shopping takes place online. I wonder what our relationship with stores of the future will look like.
  9. How does the average price of the products within a store influence customer behaviour? I wonder if there are differences in how or how long customers browse or how they interact with sales associates and other customers depending on the luxury of the store.
  10. How are stores designed to sell kids products built differently? I’d suspect they’d have to target both parents and kids at the same time. Or maybe they work to target everyone’s inner child.

Trackers like Geofencing

Note the section of the video on scents in retail