Just browsing at the mall? That's what you think
Updated 9/1/2006 9:13 AM ET
Assistant manager Chad Porter and other employees at the Sony Style store in McLean, Va., wear uniforms designed by Armani.
As you step in the door of a retail store — whether it
sells Gucci handbags, jeans for teens or hardware
— you're being lured to shop and spend in ways so
subtle you probably don't know what's happening to
you.
Or your wallet.
Retailers know how you'll approach a store, where
you'll hesitate, how to affect your mood, how to
pique your desires, how to play to your aspirations.
Everything in a store, from lighting to floor color to
music to how goods are displayed, is meant in some
way to get you to not just shop, but spend.
PHOTOS: Think you're just browsing?
"It's like a Broadway musical," says Deborah Mitchell,
a marketing expert at the University of Wisconsin.
"Nothing was put into that musical that wasn't
thought through. It's the same in a highly
orchestrated retail environment."
At a Sony Style store, for instance, the subtle
fragrance of vanilla and mandarin orange —
designed exclusively for Sony — wafts down on
shoppers, relaxing them and helping them believe
that this is a very nice place to be.
ADVICE: Understanding why you're shopping can
help curb it
Everything in the store is designed to encourage
touch, from the silk wallpaper to the smooth maple
wood cabinets to the etched-glass countertops.
Products are displayed like museum pieces and set
up for you to touch and try.
Once you touch something, Sony (SNE) figures,
you'll buy it.
At a new Home Depot (HD) in the Atlanta suburb of
Buckhead, the entranceway lures shoppers in with
an open floor plan so they get a better "vista" of the
store.
Floor-to-ceiling racks of goods, long the signature
of the warehouse store, are further back. Lower
displays of expensive goods — riding lawn mowers,
upscale porch furniture and a home design center
for redecorating kitchen, bath and flooring — are
clustered so they're visible from the front door.
At a J.C. Penney's (JCP), a "decompression area" at
the front of the store lets shoppers get acclimated
and calm down from the noise in the mall or on the
street. Three dressed mannequins offer a taste of the
season's hot trends and set up a line of sight to the
shopping ahead.
At a Macy's (FD) department store, salespeople stand
about 10 feet inside the entrance, ready to spritz
visitors with perfume.
All are ways to engage you in the store and draw
you in.
The sound
Music has been used by retailers for decades as a
way to identify their stores and affect a shopper's
mood, to make you feel happy, nostalgic or relaxed
so you linger. Think of '50s cocktail bar music in a
Pottery Barn.
But retailers are becoming more sophisticated in
how they use music. J.C. Penney has just finished
installing a new system for its stores that allows
certain music to be played at certain times of the
day. It can "zone" music by demographics, playing
more Latin music in stores where there's a higher
Hispanic population — all controlled by
headquarters in Plano, Texas.
"Most people know they are being influenced
subliminally when they shop," says Bernadette
Schleis, whose company studies consumer
behavior. "They just may not realize how much."
To help you understand what's happening when you
go shopping, here's a guide: How Retailers Lure
You to Shop and Buy.
The aroma
Anyone who's walked into a mall has been enticed
by the smell of cinnamon buns or chocolate chip
cookies. Now, retailers such as Sony and shirtmaker
Thomas Pink are developing "signature scents" that
you smell only in their stores.
"Scent is so closely aligned with your emotions, it's
so primitive," says David Van Epps, president of
ScentAir, a Charlotte company that develops
exclusive scents for businesses, including Sony.
His firm's revenue, number of employees and output
have tripled in the past two years, he says.
"Imagine you're trying to create the same level of
brand loyalty that Harley-Davidson (HOG) has when
a guy is willing to tattoo his arm with the words
'Harley-Davidson.' That's what we're going for."
Other retailers might not have signature scents, but
they use fragrance. Bloomingdale's uses different
essences in different departments: baby powder in
the baby store; suntan lotion in the bathing suit
area; lilacs in lingerie; cinnamon and pine scent
during the holiday season.
"We even fragranced their outside (display) windows
in New York last year," says Van Epps. "They did a
Phantom of the Opera display, and we fragranced it
with rose."
Thomas Pink pipes the smell of clean, pressed shirts
into its stores. The essence of lavender wafts out of
L'Occitane skin-care stores.
And if brightly colored window displays aren't
enough to lure you into a Williams-Sonoma kitchen
store, the scents from frequent cooking
demonstrations may. "It feels like you are in
someone else's house," says Michelle Bogan, a retail
consultant for Kurt Salmon Associates.
Sony decided to create its own scent for its Sony
Style stores as one way to make the consumer
electronics it sells less intimidating, particularly to
women. "From research, we found that scent is
closest to the brain and will evoke the most
emotion, even faster than the eye," says Dennis
Syracuse, senior vice president of consumer retail
sales. "Our scent helps us create an environment
like no other."
How retailers use scent can be tricky, though,
Mitchell says.
"Not everyone agrees what smells good."
The entrance
The scent may have lured you near, but what's in the
entrance is the spring on the trap. That's where
you'll see some of the glitziest, most expensive stuff
in the store — the stuff you wish you could buy.
"The key businesses that draw women — the high-
volume, high-profit goods — are right up front:
handbags, cosmetics, jewelry and sometimes,
intimate apparel," says Dan Butler, a National Retail
Federation vice president.
The entrance is important because it hints at what's
inside that you must have. "We're trying to give her
ideas right as she's walking into the store," says
Karen Meskey-Wilson, vice president of store design
for J.C. Penney.
Stores that cater to teens often pick one hot item and
heavily promote it in their windows to increase
demand, says consultant Bogan. Gap is doing that
this fall with denim. The new "skinny" jeans style
may push people to update their wardrobes, she
says.
"The idea is that there is so much excitement about
great new jeans that you'll want to go out and buy
some, even if you don't need jeans," she says.
Others use a less-is-more tactic. Abercrombie &
Fitch lures teens into its Ruehl stores by not having
merchandise visible from the mall. You have to go
into the store, which looks like a Greenwich Village
apartment inside, to see if you like anything. Once
inside, the retailer hopes its soft lighting, couches
and books will make you want to stay and buy.
In department stores, merchants battle to get the
best spots up front for their goods; those that sell
the most get the prime positions. Cosmetics, which
never go on sale, are among the most profitable
items sold in department stores, Butler says. Free
makeovers lure clients in and create a "sense of
connection and obligation," says consumer
psychologist Kit Yarrow.
"A nationally known makeup artist can sell $30,000
in cosmetics in one day," says Butler of the NRF.
The flow
How you as a shopper move in and around a store
is not, really, up to you.
You're funneled from the store's entrance past its
most expensive goods through a maze of aisles and
into departments that are set up as stores-within-a-
store. Then you find yourself on "the racetrack," an
oval aisle that carries you around the entire
building to get a look at everything.
It's the same at a department store or a home
renovation store or, on a different scale, in a
specialty retailer
Mini-displays called "trend stations" are parked in
the middle of aisles to stop shoppers' progress and
entice them to look and buy.
Lifestyle vignettes, such as carefully constructed
mini-bedrooms or mini-bathrooms, make shoppers
stop and look. Home Depot is using such vignettes
in its Buckhead store to showcase its expanded
kitchen and bathroom goods, including new vessel
sinks and architectural designs for cabinets. The
displays may be adopted in other new and
renovated stores.
"Customers are so much more sophisticated in
décor and wanting to take a risk in their home. So
we're getting more sophisticated in our
presentation," says Kim McKesson, senior vice
president of store merchandising. "Our bathrooms
aren't just knock-down white cabinets anymore."
If you like the look, whatever the look is, you can
have it right away. All goods in the displays are
within arm's reach.
"It's incredible to watch people as they walk up, see
the mannequins and pick up the whole outfit," says
Meskey-Wilson of J.C. Penney. "We're seeing great
sell-through."
Sony Style has mini-living rooms set up to
showcase what its 40-inch flat-panel TV would look
like over a fireplace. "We've had customers bring in
their architect and say, 'Re-create this in my house. I
want the whole setup,' " says Syracuse of Sony.
Narrow aisles crammed with goods are going away.
"Twenty years ago, the founders wanted you to get
lost in the store," spokesman David Sandor says of
Home Depot's founding partners, Bernard Marcus
and Arthur Blank. That's why Home Depots were laid
out with long narrow aisles and no cut-across in
the middle of the store.
Now, Home Depot is widening its aisles and
lowering displays so customers can touch and feel
products. J.C. Penney is "really weeding out the stuff
in our stores," says Mike Boylson, chief marketing
officer. The retailer used to have eight to 10 rows of
merchandise in each area. As it opens new stores or
renovates existing ones, it's cutting that to four.
"You don't have to go through a sea of racks
anymore," says Meskey-Wilson.
Most consumers come into a store and head to the
right, says consultant Bogan. That's why retailers,
including Williams Sonoma, put high-priced
impulse items to the right of the front door, such as
a $150 wine opener.
"The No. 1 thing retailers are trying to do is to get
people to make impulse purchases," says Yarrow,
also a business professor at San Francisco's Golden
Gate University.
And you thought you had a list and were going to stick to it.