Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Say you've written a list and gone to the store.

  • But you quickly start buying things that you didn't plan on.

  • After all, fresh produce would be nice.

  • And these look good.

  • Half off?

  • Why not!

  • Wait.

  • Why is it so hard to stick to a shopping list?

  • Researchers estimate that half of consumer spending is unplanned.

  • Sometimes it's stuff you just forgot to put on your list.

  • But there's another kind of purchase that consumer psychologists measure...

  • That would be more of your impulse purchase where you see something.

  • you think it's kind of a cool item.

  • I think I'll buy that.

  • The architecture of a store can impact consumer satisfaction, which in turn might spur impulse buys.

  • In the 20th century, the architect Victor Gruen used light and space to dramatically stage goods in storefront windows.

  • His designs tried to capture the attention of passersbyand convert them into customers.

  • Today, people refer to this as 'The Gruen Effect.'

  • It happens when a store (environment) takes you from shopping for a specific item to shopping for shopping's sake.

  • It's about the mindset and the environment that they try to create.

  • Does this sound familiar?

  • Think about your last trip to IKEA.

  • They have the restaurant with the Swedish meatballs and all of this stuff. And that's not a coincidence.

  • You're trying to build excitement because when people are excited and aroused, they're more likely to buy.

  • Almost 20 percent of our buying decisions are based on logic and needs.

  • 80 percent of our buying decisions are actually based on emotions.

  • And we try to make that connection or bridge that connection.

  • Yeah, of course we are retailers so we try to make sure that you know, grab a thing or two.

  • My name is Richard La Graauw and I'm creative director for IKEA here in the US.

  • Which is an important job.

  • He's in charge of how the products are presented in the store.

  • That includes layout.

  • Retailers pay close attention to how their floor plan can change in-store behavior.

  • Grid layouts emphasize speed and convenience.

  • Where freeform layouts allow exploration, which can make customers visit more parts of the shop.

  • And racetrack designs create a loop that exposes customers to a certain path of product.

  • IKEA uses a fixed path through a maze of product displays.

  • And that can extend the distance travelled in store.

  • So the more you travel, the more items by definition as a shopper you're going to be exposed to.

  • At the entrance, most customers will be drawn to a bright yellow bin of bags, placed next to the escalator.

  • Spots of light guide your eye to the entrance of the showroom.

  • And before you know it, you're taking the scenic route.

  • So with light, you can actually steer consumers towards different areas and toward different product selections.

  • On average, customers only visit about a third of a retailer's floor area.

  • And IKEA's layout forces customers to cover more ground.

  • IKEA was always designed as a place where you can see, touch, and try, no?

  • So they can spend hours if they want to.

  • But there's also consumers that know exactly what they want and just want to have it quick.

  • So it's tailored to both.

  • One researcher in London surveyed IKEA to hand-draw these pedestrians pathways.

  • This heat map of the showroom was generated using her data.

  • It looks like the path guides are working.

  • Where Victor Gruen simply used a hunch to invent window shopping, virtually any store from IKEA to your local grocery has a trove of big data at their fingertips.

  • We used technology to measure actually the flow of consumers and where they're interested and in which areas they intend to go.

  • And that works all based on Beacon technologies.

  • Which means retailers like IKEA will only get better at nudging you to spend time in more parts of the store.

  • So, compulsive shoppers, the next time you go to the storeconsider taking the shortcut.

  • Or, at least, don't forget what you came here for.

  • Because it probably wasn't plants and a plate of meatballs.

  • You do you, though.

  • Hi there! Thanks for watching the goods. And a big thanks to our sponsor American Express.

  • Amex has a credit card feature that gives you choices for how to make payments bigger small, called Payitplanit. Payit helps you reduce your balance by making small payments throughout the month.

  • And Planit can help you split purchases over 100 dollars up over time. You can check it out on americanexpress.com/payitplanit.

  • And thanks again to American Express. Their support made this series possible.

Say you've written a list and gone to the store.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it