When planning visual merchandising you must consider many aspects but of course
not everything is equally important. As so often happens in marketing, it helps
to look at visual merchandising from the customers perspective. So what do
customers expect from the product presentation when they enter the store?
I've summarized the customer's expectations for you in three principles.
First, make the merchandise visible. Second, make the merchandise tangible and
easily accessible; and third, give shoppers good choices.
Principle number 1: Make the merchandise visible. This point seems to
be obvious but it's not what I found in many of the stores that visited and
analyzed over the years. Sometimes I found that merchandise was hidden behind
large point-of-purchase displays. This may be great for the merchandise on
display but I strongly feel that the products in less prominent positions
have a right to be seen as well!
On other occasions the products were missing from the store shelves
completely. They were simply not regularly restocked and no effort was
made to conceal the gaps. Half empty shells may have been the norm in the Eastern Bloc
prior to the revolution in the late 1980s but they're
inexcusable in the current age of inventory control systems. Shoppers will only buy
what they see.
Therefore, it's an essential task of visual merchandising to make products
visible. Principle number 2: Make the merchandise tangible and easily
accessible. Shoppers tend to touch most products before buying them. Eyesight is
the most common sense with which humans gather information but let's not forget
about touch. Touching help shoppers make an emotional connection with a product
Seeing is believing --
but touching is feeling. Think about the softness of that cashmere sweater or the
steady and secure grip of a cellphone. The sensuous curves of a shampoo
bottle
and the feeling of sitting on a soft sofa.They all sell the product.
Let's also not forget that giving the shoppers a chance to feel product is a
major advantage that brick-and-mortar stores have over online retailers. Many
retail stores use locked display cases or find other ways to prevent customers
from helping themselves in selecting the products. For example, they place them on
high shelves that petite shoppers have no chance of reaching. It's understandable
to keep expensive jewelry under lock and key to prevent shoplifting but the
vast majority of products should be easily accessible. Recently I visited a
dazzling japanese bookstore in Bangkok, Thailand. The store looked really great
from a macro perspective. When it took a closer look at the books, however, I was
shocked: every single one of the thousands of books in this store was
individually wrapped in an impenetrable plastic wrapper. a sign in each book
shelf declared: Kindly unwrap the book at the nearest counter. I did that with the
first two books but then I stopped. After all, how many books can you expect the
kindly smiling sales clerk to unwrap for you?
This was one of the very few occasions that I left a bookstore without making a
purchase. For many products shoppers don't want to see just the packaging but
the product as well. Stores where such products are sold should display a selection
of unpacked goods. For example, an electronic store should have a selection
of demonstration cameras on display to allow the customer to feel each product,
see how it works and decide whether to purchase it based on their own
experience. Many demonstration products may of course be unusable after having
been touched by thousands of customers but isn't that a small price to pay for
the many additional products sold? Principle number 3: Give shoppers
good choices. Consumers want to have full control of what they're doing. Visual
merchandising should be used to give consumers the feeling of freedom of choice,
not that they are being forced into making a purchase.
Some stores offer only relatively few choices on purpose.
This strategy follows the scarcity principle. The scarcity principle is
based on the assumption that because available objects are rare, artificially
limiting the range or availability will increase the perceived value of those
goods. Examples are limited editions or sales items that are available for only
a very short period of time. The scarcity principle can be part of a successful
visual merchandising strategy. If it's used excessively, however, it can restrain
shoppers perceived freedom, which will in turn lower the shopping enjoyment. At the
same time there is also a dark side to having choices. Shoppers are confronted
with too many products they get overloaded. Therefore measures have to be
taken to reduce the risk of overstraining customers and provide a
balanced display of choices that works for the customer. Now this will be the
topic of our next video.