Michael's Observation

Extensive research concludes that the average customer will stray away from their shopping list and will purchase something on impulse. 70% of buyers bring lists into the store, roughly 10% of shoppers stick to their list. Managers have succeeded when a shopper buys what is on the end shelf or on sale. It is by design that milk, meats, and bread is located towards the back of the store. Managers and owners cause customers to walk past as many products as possible before they pick up the products they went in

The things a person could see if they simply watched Walmart’s customers for even a short amount of time are mind boggling. During a typical, mundane Monday afternoon, I browsed through Walmart 's many aisles not in search of a particular product, but simply observing and studying different aspects of the supermarket. The customer’s behavior, product placement, and employee interactions all stood out to me as interesting. I also took notice of how different consumers interacted with different staff members and vice-versa. As I observed the customers, teachings from my Sociology class immediately started taking form in the real world. While analyzing the different social interactions the people of Walmart were having, I begin to apply different theories, such as the functionalist theory, why these things must happen, the conflict theory, why they are unequal, and symbolic interaction, how they happen. Surprisingly, while watching the average day in Walmart, I found it was hard to ignore my ethnocentric viewpoint, thinking your culture is better than another, to cloud my perspective of why certain interactions were occurring.

A vivid depiction about the mall’s ……………. around it gives the audience the impression of already visiting the mall. The press kit contained a array of details concerning the mall:

A famous writer for the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has written an article, “The Science of Shopping”, which is based on Paco Underhill’s study of retail anthropology. The intention of a retail store is obvious- that is to attract customers and convince them to perchance as much as they can. There is so much knowledge that we can study, such that how the environment affects people’s thinking. These are tiny details that we don’t usually think about. The reason of how Paco Underhill success is because he notices these details. Details determine success or failure. Paco Undnerhill—a talent and passion environmental psychologist, provides us a new point of view of the science of displaying products,

For this project, I chose Target’s department store because, one, I am an employee there and most importantly I felt that it showed different types of people in multiple ways through its products. For my first observation my goal was to examine how the store was arranged, the products that

On July 2, 1962 Sam Walton opened the very first Walmart store in Rogers, Ark. Each week, more than 140 million Americans shop at Walmart. The company has over 11,000 stores in 28 countries. In fact, just recently the company opened a new store in my neighborhood. All summer I watched them build and build and I would say to my mom, “I can’t wait for them to finish so we can stop having to go to that ghetto Walmart.” I know “ghetto Walmart?” but it’s the truth. There was one other Walmart in my neighborhood and it was known as the ghetto Walmart. So when I received the essay assignment I knew immediately where I wanted to go. At ghetto Walmart the norms became abnormal and the abnormal things started to be accepted. The Walmart Company knows how to get costumers to come into their stores, I’ll give them that, but something just went wrong with that one.

Whenever I go to Stop & Shop, I tend to take interest in the thousands of products that surround me as I walk down an aisle. The wafting aroma of freshly baked pastries and the sight of cold soft drinks are just some of the things that trigger my appetite for food. Most often, I find myself buying more than what I originally planned on. That’s exactly what the layout of a supermarket tries to make consumers do. Marion Nestle argues in her article, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate”, how supermarkets employ clever tactics such as product layout in order to make consumers spend as much money as possible. She covers fundamental rules that stores employ in order to keep customers in aisles for the longest time, a series of cognitive studies that stores perform on customers, and examples of how supermarkets encourage customers to buy more product. Overall, Nestle’s insight into how supermarkets manipulate people into spending extra money has made me a more savvy consumer and I feel if more people were to read her article, then they can avoid some of the supermarket’s marketing tactics as well.

When the Tatelman brothers took over the business, they changed their mode of advertising. They realized that by limiting their advertising to newspapers, they were potentially missing out on a whole demographic of people that needed furniture, which would be 18-34 year olds. This demographic was starting to move out on their own, starting families, and needed furniture. By moving from newspapers to funny radio ads and later funny TV ads, Barry and Eliot were able to draw in more customers, especially the demographic they were targeting (Iacobucci, 2013). Before they started to add in the extra shopping experiences, they had customers waiting to get into their third store. Once they added the entertainment portions of the store, they were able to draw in more customers. Even if the customer is only there to take part in the entertainment aspect of the store, which is in the back of every store, they do have to walk through the showroom first. By walking through the showroom a first time customer could see a room design or one piece of furniture that catches their eye. Each customer has a different shopping experience, whether it be at one store or multiple Jordan’s Furniture

The objective of this report is to provide an in depth analysis of the retailer Charming Charlie, in regards to store layout, design, and visual merchandising. Emphasis will be placed on the store’s attraction to the target market, layout organization, and brand image consistency. Charming Charlie is a women’s contemporary jewelry and accessories specialty retailer. The following information is based on the observation of the Charming Charlie’s location in Ashley Park, which is a shopping center in Newnan, Georgia.

Ever walk into a store with a defined list, but still get other items you never intended to get? Well, in Marion Nestle’s article “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate,” Nestle goes into detail about how the supermarkets in your daily life uses many tricks to get you to buy items and spend money. Nestle claims that supermarkets and their managers study habits of shoppers to gain the control using certain tactics. According to Nestle, “This research tells food retailers how to lay out the stores, where to put specific products, how to position products on shelves, and lastly how to set prices and advertise products” (Nestle 498). Some tactics that Marion Nestle mention are product location, music, and even item size. During the course of my paper I will convince you that these tactics are in fact real and bring more to your attention. Us consumers have to stick together and this is the first step.

For generations, Americans has been brainwashed by the media to believe that what is displayed on television is the ideal perception of what real beauty have manipulated American citizens of what style looks like. Furthermore, with their many brainwashing strategies, that means more and more consumers spending beyond their budget. Our perspectives have been heavily influenced by what they believe is nice, but can we afford it all? With unrealistic combination of goods in store, plazas, and mall, consuming has become a bad behavior of some. In support of my argument of the “Overspending”, author Gladwell’s article “The Science of Shopping” also argues that stores adjust to fit the needs and wants of the shopper are evidently presented. With that being said, we have no idea when we are being manipulated into unrealistic shopping behavior that is influenced by the way the advertisement is presented in visual sight. Author Gladwell gets a “retail anthropologist” and “urban geographer” named Paco Underhill to give breakdown points of how he helps brand name stores influence consumers into persuasion of buying more. However, most of us fall short of that discipline, while being persuaded to overspend during our store visits.

His voice reverberated off the walls, in the confined, cluttered space, and Michael immediately regretted having not lowered it from it's normal volume. The last thing he desired was to bring attention to himself, however a glance over his shoulder quickly eased that concern. Apart from an odd bob of the head here and there, to see who it was that had broken the silence, the majority of the customers were too immersed in their selection of the variety of goods on sale, to have cared, and when his gaze met those who's curiosity had been aroused, theirs swiftly averted. Michael presumed the boutique to be a place where the clientele mostly kept to themselves, and didn't make waves; possibly in the event that caused their intent for being there to be questioned. Issues with your husband? A Voodoo doll, perhaps?

The purpose of this paper was to observe the consumers of a retail store of my choice; I chose to observe Victoria’s Secret and Targets consumers, because I myself am consumers of those stores quite often, then to analyze the behavior of the consumers of Victoria’s Secret and Target. Victoria’s Secret and Target consumers differ because of the difference in type of retail they offer and sell. Victoria’s Secret consumers know what they are going to be shopping for women and certain needs or wants they are looking to satisfy. Target consumers shop for any age and any gender,

Greenbury made a number of structural changes to the look and feel of his stores during the 1990 's that allowed M&S customers to make purchases in the type of environment and location that suited their changing lifestyles. Through carefully targeted investment, Greenbury invested heavily in already profitable stores, simplifying their product ranges, grouping products in similar categories together and providing a greater feeling of space and better lighting. This move away from drab, dreary and cluttered sales floor came in response to criticism from customers and, in response to the changes that Greenbury implemented, customers voted with their feet and came flocking into the new-look stores.

Store environment could affect shoppers’ behaviors in several ways. Store environment also influences various stages of shoppers’ cognitive process inside a store, including attention, perception, categorization and information processing. For example, it has been shown that perceived waiting time varies with the valence of music and consumers’ categorization of a restaurant as a fast food outlet depends largely on the external appearance of the store .While the foregoing discussion is mainly concerned about the immediate effects of store environment, store environment may also have lagged or carryover effects on