Internal Merchandising

Strategy

What does Paco know?

Author of

Why We Buy

The Call of the Mall

President, Envirosell

Watched thousands

of people in retail

environments.

And, now a word from Paco

“Banks do a horrendous job with signs

and other in-branch media. Almost none

of it is positioned in a strategic fashion—

it’s just nailed up or dumped wherever

there’s space with no thought given to

what customers will be doing or thinking

about when they come upon the sign or

brochure rack.”

Greet Them At The Door

There’s only one time

when anyone pauses

to study what’s written

there on the door:

when the store is

closed.

The Transition Zone

When I talk to clients they invariably point to our

findings on the transition zone as among our most

meaningful, useful work.

Allowing some space between the entrance of a store

and a product gives it more time in the shopper’s eye

as she approaches it. It builds a little visual

anticipation.

Leave me alone!

Shoppers for the most part ignore flyers

which make the store’s intelligent

marketing plan much less effective than it

should be. It’s futile to try to interfere with

a shoppers’s natural task-oriented

behavior.

If a bank customer is intent on filling out a

deposit slip, she is in no frame of mind to

read a brochure about vacation loans. In-

store media needs to be placed where

shoppers naturally pause in their travels if

it’s to have a fighting chance.

I’m on a mission. Again, when you’re

filling out a deposit slip

or endorsing checks,

you’re concentrating

too hard to think about

anything else. And

once you’ve filled out

the paperwork, you

race to get in line.

Let’s take it slow.

You have to deliver the information the way people

absorb it, a bit at a time, a layer at a time, and in the

proper sequence. If you don’t get their attention first,

nothing that follows will register. If you tell too much too

soon, you’ll overload them and they’ll give up. If you

confuse them, they’ll ignore the message altogether.

They Hate to Wait

It’s a good idea to position signs for shoppers standing in line to pay, but it’s a bad idea if those signs promote merchandise that’s kept in the rear of the store.

In one of the prototype (post office) stores we studied, hanging behind the cashiers were large banners promoting various services. Fourteen percent of customers read those banners, our researchers found, for an average of 5.4 seconds each. Which is pretty good in the sign world. And not unexpected, because when you’re in line at the post office, what else is there to do? The area behind or to the side of the cashiers is almost always the hottest signage real estate

Wait! We have something to say.

Quite simply, a short wait enhances the entire shopping experience and a long one poisons it. But, it’s possible to bend waiting time – to alter how shoppers perceive it. When people wait about a minute and a half, their sense of how much time elapsed is fairly accurate. Anything over 90 seconds or so, and their sense of time distorts.

To bend time: Interaction, human or otherwise: Time a shopper spends waiting after

an employee has initiated contact goes faster than time spent waiting before that interaction takes place.

Companionship: The wait seems shorter if you’ve got someone to talk to. Recognize lone shoppers are the ones who need employee contact the most.

Diversion: Merchandising materials, signage, shoppable racks should be positioned for the second or third person in line.

Another popular form of shopper diversion is, believe it or not, signage. Customers perceive waiting in time as shorter if there are signs to read. Smart retailers view waiting time as a kind of intangible asset—it’s one of the few opportunities when you have your customers standing in one spot, facing in one direction, with nothing much else to do.

A Vast Right-Handed World

Because American shoppers

automatically move to the right, the front

right of any store is its prime real estate.

That’s the one to take advantage of how

people move.

All shoppers reach right, most of them being right-

handed….So, if your store wishes to place something into

the hand of a shopper; it should be displayed just slightly to

the right of where he or she will be standing.

A Vast Right-Handed World

Guilty?

Five minutes from my office is a branch of Chase Manhattan Bank where you can find this merchandising innovation: a round table covered by the cheapest blue plastic table cloth you’ve ever seen, atop which were tossed some brochures for car loans and mortgages, joined by a TV monitor, once intended perhaps for showing in-branch videos but now unused and completely covered by a blanket of dust.

Change it up.

If the average customer comes

every two weeks, then your

window displays need to be

changed that often, so they’ll

always seem fresh and

interesting. Here’s another

example of how design and

merchandising must work hand

in hand. If windows are made so

they are easy for employees to

get into the display will be

changed more often than it it’s a

pain in the neck.

I can’t read that.

I still can’t read that.

I said, I can’t read that. With age, three main ocular events occur meaning you

can no longer focus on small type, (it) changes how you perceive color, and the world looks dimmer than it once did.

Readers want bigger text. Readers want 12 points or larger.

By 2025, anything smaller than 13-point type will be a form of commercial suicide.

The yellowing of the aging cornea means that certain subtle gradations of color will become invisible to a large part of the population. We’re going to have to see a lot more black, white and red and a lot less of any other hue.

All print will have to be bold and high-contrast—dark colors on white (or light) backgrounds.

Hey KIDS!

If a store is somehow unwelcoming to children, parent-shoppers will get the message and stay away.

That children can be counted on to be enthusiastic consumers (or co-consumers) as long as their needs have been considered.

If the parent’s sustained close attention is required (by say, a car salesman or bank loan officer) then someone must first find a way to divert the attention of a restless, bored child.

We did a study for Wells Fargo a few years ago showing that 15 percent of all those entering its branches are under seven years old.

“What’s your most effective selling tool?” we asked a loan officer there. She reached in her desk and pulled out a lollipop. She said it could usually be counted on to buy her two minutes of uninterrupted face time with a parent, all she needed.

What did you say?

The sales people would load shoppers down with literature but fail to give them folders.

There were plenty of brochure racks but no brochures, which is a problem.

Empty literature racks, give shoppers the (correct) impression that details don’t get taken care of in this place of business.

One sided posters were taped to the exterior and interior windows, meaning that shoppers frequently found themselves staring at blank white rectangles.

For Example

This branch has a flyer facing the outside of the door, but

the inside is empty. You get the picture.

Banker’s Hours vs. Consumer

Hours

What do banks do wrong? Name another

store open only from 9 am to 5 pm

Monday to Friday. Yet banks still think of

branches as unwanted costs rather than

opportunities to meet customers face-to-

face and finds ways—income generating

ways to serve them.

Meet your goals.

Move your desk.

In a bank, the desk arrangement tells a great deal about the relationship between you two. He or she is on one side of the desk, you’re on the other, and the computer monitor screen, which displays all the most intimate facts of your financial life, faces toward the banker and away from you.

We learned an important lesson from HFC Bank in Great Britain: The closing rate of loans goes up, and the time required to close them goes down, when banks and customers sit next to each other rather than face-to-face over a broad expanse of desktop or table.

Conestoga Merchandising

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