I need you to go walk around your closest shopping district looking at displays. Do you see some that are taking advantage of the concept of elasticity? Particularly cross-price elasticity? You see this when you see groups of items used together displayed together. Are all of them on sale or only some of them? Use your blog post to tell me who could have done a better job with pricing and display. What would you have changed to maximize total revenue? (Or check out your grocery store. They usually have good examples as well.)
My local retail displays, with regards to fashion, show the concept of cross-price elasticity. Clothing will not be displayed in a window alone, but more as a set or mix with other items like complimenting clothes or accessories. The shirt is on sale, but the pants, shoes, belt, and the rest of the ensemble will be full price. Either way they show you a good look, a look you may want, and the sale tag catches your eye. In my local grocery store the peanut butter and jelly are in the same row right next to each other. The pasta and pasta sauce are right next to each other. The cookies are usually near the milk section. For some reason the cereal is not near the milk section. I believe this could have been laid out better. All of the meats are together in the refrigerated area, but all the meat rubs, spices, and marinades aren’t as close as they should be.
They say that eye level is buy level, but some of my favorites and some of our local top sellers, aren’t located at eye level. I would also take some time to arrange all the colorful kids items lower so they are eye level with those under 8 year old’s walking the store. If I were the owner of my local grocery store I would change a number of things. The variety of products is great, but can be overwhelming. I can understand why Americans want 25 different types of ketchup, but the fringe bottles should take up a smaller amount of shelve space (viewable shelve space).
I would enlarge the local top selling product’s shelve space, and I would try and highlight all the seasonal items right at the entrance. I can imagine there are different profit margins on many of the items, so one should take that into consideration when building displays that fit with the psychology of the hungry shopper. Walmart does a good job of having the seasonal specific holiday items right by the entrance. This way Easter items are pushed in spring, Halloween items are pushed in October, and so on. I would also remove all the boring straight rows and come up with a more appealing experience like an Ikea. Ikea has a layout that meanders around through different home room examples. It is tough to get through an Ikea quickly as you are guided around via pathway lights and display configurations.
The types of foods we eat hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years, same with our grocery store layouts. I think some innovation could be had here. Imagine a grocery store where you walk in and a season display is right in front, and you have paths to go down to end up at the 5 sections. What if we rearranged all the sections to be relating to meals instead of by like-item? We could have a section for each meal of the day and group all those items together to make it easier for the regular shopper to feel like a top chef, and inspire cooking ideas. There could be a section for Dinners. Breakfast section contains all things breakfast. Lunch section… you get the idea. The “Backyard Cookout” section would be inspiring to those without ideas on what to bring to the big game event happening down the street at Joe Neighbor’s house. In the dinner section you could see combinations of steak, meat rub, meat thermometers, asparagus, and potatoes. All right next to each other for easy gathering.
Dude.World 