Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping

People tend to hurry from their cars to stores. Parking lots are crowded, filled with moving vehicles, and often hot, cold, windy, or rainy. Shoppers move quickly as they enter stores, ignoring window signs and displays, then spend several moments adjusting to the sights, sounds, temperature, and smells of the interior. This entrance area is a “decompression zone” or “landing strip” about 10 feet deep where customers will disregard displays and signage. It’s better, therefore, to place shopping baskets, flyers, signage, and store directories about 10 feet in.

In some departments—cosmetics, for example—it’s important to greet customers but wait about one minute before doing so. Doing so gives shoppers time to get comfortable in the store and decide whether they need directions to a particular area. In other stores, such as Wal-Mart, an elderly greeter says hello to everyone who enters: their presence relaxes patrons and, strangely, helps prevent thefts.

Products themselves should be placed carefully. The first electronic gadget a shopper sees often isn’t the one they choose; by the time they’ve walked further in and learned what’s available, the items closest to them have a better chance. Younger women want some privacy further back in the store as they try cosmetics or peruse hair color options, while an older woman will simply grab a favorite product as she walks through. 

On a chilly day, a woman shopper will enter a store holding a handbag, remove her coat, and have only one hand left to shop with. One or two items later, she’s done. At a newsstand in New York’s Grand Central Station—where commuters hurry from trains to work and back again and only have a quick moment to purchase a paper and a snack—Underhill found that the newsstand’s lack of a waist-level counter prevented patrons from setting down their items so they could pay for purchases. This slowed transactions, caused lines to form, dissuaded many potential customers, and restricted revenue.

People at drugstores often underestimate how many things they’ll buy; with just two hands, they end up juggling a few things at most. One drug chain made a policy of offering baskets to anyone without one, and sales went up. Baskets piled at the entrance get ignored—on entering, patrons aren’t thinking about how many items they’ll end up buying—but when stores stack baskets strategically around the interior, customers make more purchases. As for where to put them: “A good, simple test on placement is that if you have to keep restocking a pile of baskets through the day, it’s probably in a good place” (57). 

The most beautiful sign in a store will go to waste if no one reads it, and that depends on several factors. Colors and typography matter, as well as the content of the words. Especially important is where the sign is placed: A great sign in the wrong location will go unread, and a sign on a wall that no one looks at will be useless.

With the decline in the power of branding, more shopping decisions are made at the store. Signs must be simple, clear, and direct, placed in the proper order, so they tell the story of how the shopper can find and choose a satisfying product. Where patrons walk briskly, a sign must be “short and punchy—arresting” (64); where customers browse or wait for service, a sign can include more detail. Above all, signs should go where people’s eyes are likely to land—for example, near the cashier.

At a fast-food restaurant, people get in line, glance at the menu board, make their order, then wait one to two minutes as their order is prepared, during which time they start reading the menu board again: “61 percent of the total time someone spends looking at a menu board is done after they’ve ordered” (68). At the condiment bar, pictures of desserts encourage customers to top off their meal later with something sweet. Patrons of Applebee’s or Olive Garden sit in chatty groups and ignore signage, but fast-food customers often sit alone and will read anything—table signs, tray liners, even napkins.

In general, people entering a store are task-oriented and won’t pay much attention to signage until their main goal is complete. Thereafter, they relax and look around, and that’s when signs become effective. A rack of flyers and brochures that no one touches on their way into a store will get good usage if turned around to face those same customers as they leave.

A good example of proper signage is road signs, which have to be effective to prevent accidents. They’re big, clear, and simple, and they use easily recognized symbols, from the red stop sign to the “one way” sign that’s shaped like a pointer, to a sign with “a gas pump, or a fork and spoon, or a wheelchair” that makes clear what’s ahead (73).

Sometimes there are too many signs, and this excess causes people to ignore all of them. Half of all signs sent to retailers never get used. However, signs that move and change, like electronic billboards, get much more engagement than static ones. 

Most people, in most countries, enter a store and drift toward the right; they end up walking counterclockwise through the place. If the biggest-selling section is to the left, customers will arc around quickly and end up there, and the entire right side of the store will get few visits. In general, it’s better to put the most important store sections toward the right; patrons will visit there first, then wander through the rest of the store before leaving.

Most people are right-handed, and it’s easier for them to reach for things to the right. Thus, items the store wants to promote are placed just to the right of best-selling merchandise. As people walk, they tend to look straight ahead, not sideways, so shelving should be angled to face them. Endcaps, whose products are displayed outward at the ends of aisles, are another way to catch the eye.

Shoppers should be able to look at merchandise on a table and then glance up and see other attractive items nearby; signage and shelving shouldn’t obscure such items from view. Products shelved much above eye level or below knee level will rarely be noticed; their “capture rate,” or ability to attract the eye, will be dismal. Items sold in boxes, such as electronics, should have packages that name the item in bold letters that are easily read, even if the box is on the bottom shelf.

To get patrons to visit more of the store, it helps to put popular items and necessities at the rear. Thus, the dairy sections of most supermarkets are in the back, and clothing stores try to make their back walls appear interesting from a distance. It’s also important, once shoppers have visited the rear, that signage and attractive merchandise displays be aimed directly at them as they walk back through the store.

The front of the store remains the most important, and retailers can maximize sales there by adjusting prominently displayed merchandise to attract shoppers most likely to visit at various times during the day. At a bookstore, for example, moms with strollers who visit in the morning should first encounter child care and family fitness topics, while kids out of school in the afternoon should see books on sports, TV, pop music, and the like. 

Customers sometimes force the hand of retailers. Middle-aged women who carried a few extra pounds began to buy men’s underwear because it was more comfortable; by the early 2000s, women’s undies had acquired the wider elastic bands of men’s wear. Womenswear showroom floors usually don’t provide seating, but husbands often wait there while their wives shop, and the men improvise by sitting on display tables or windowsills, where they make other female shoppers uncomfortable.

Women need to test lipstick on themselves before buying, but doing so can make the entire tube unsellable to anyone else. No perfect system has yet been devised to work around this problem, and women have foiled every attempt to restrict their ability to do a quick test using a fresh tube. One solution, available in Japan, is to offer lipstick samples for a dollar or two.

In the days of video rentals, regular customers would save time by heading straight for the returns cart, where popular videos waited to be re-shelved. A smart retailer would spike the cart with high-profit videos to generate even more rentals.

At fast-food restaurants, drive-through customers in newer cars often pick up their meals and then park in the restaurant lot and eat, enjoying their comfortable vehicles while listening to music or talking on the phone. Restaurants have responded by increasing the size of their parking lots and adding shade. Underhill suggests these stores offer bibs as well, to protect blouses and ties.