Keep a Skeptical Eye on Suggested Tactics

In the RIMtailing blog, I aim to give you actionable advice. Each posting describes a tactic that's been shown to increase profitability. Today, here's a tactic about tactics: Use a skeptical eye. Before putting time and money into implementing a tactic, see if it makes sense to you as a professional retailer that it will work.
     That's not to say every profit-making tactic sparkles like gold at first glance. Some work because they give you an edge over the old, conventional retailing practices used by your competitors. Consider the New York University finding that sales of indulgence products are likely to climb if the products are featured in places adjacent to products that shoppers believe they should purchase. It might take a little thought to recognize how we believe we've earned the right to indulgence after we've bought—or as it turns out, even considered buying—a virtue product.
     With some tactics, the reason they work is what could be called the "Pay Attention Effect." If you decide to rearrange your merchandise to fit what you're told about consumer psychology or how customers flow through your store, you and your staff will be paying extra attention to the shoppers' reactions to the changes, and that extra attention to the shoppers will, in itself, boost sales. Organizational psychologists call this the Hawthorne Effect: Decades ago, researchers found that worker productivity at the Western Electric Hawthorne Plant went up markedly after some changes were introduced. But the productivity increases were really caused by the extra attention the workers were receiving from the researchers.
     Should you care? If the change makes you money, why is it important to spend time dissecting the reasons? Well, because you want to see if there are less expensive ways to achieve the same sales boost next time.