Add Apparent Assortment in Tight Quarters

An article last week in The Tampa Tribune described a trend among retailers to open up or move into smaller stores to save money on rent, maintenance, and payroll.
     If this is the path of your business, you might be tempted to cut back on the breadth and width of your product selection, becoming a specialty shop. That might be a good decision. According to the Wall Street Journal, sales in the U.S. of specialty items are increasing more than three times as fast as traditional retail sales.
     Still, in the smaller store, quarters might be more cramped. Researchers at Columbia University and University of British Columbia found that when shoppers from Western cultures are in tight spaces, they want greater variety among products. If they have fewer choices, they’ll become less comfortable. Uncomfortable shoppers leave the store sooner and resist returning to shop with you again.
     What to do? Choose one of these:

• Describe product differences to shoppers. University of Pennsylvania studies discovered that consumers who initially see a limited variety in the breadth and width of merchandise become much happier, and therefore stay around longer to buy, when the retail store helps them recognize the differences among the products. The consumers don’t feel so trapped by restrictions on their freedom to choose. In signage and in customer-salesperson conversations, you’ll want to categorize products because customers seek categories. But especially in the more cramped store, also highlight the differences among the product offerings.
• If the products are somewhat substitutable—such as earrings or soups—arrange the stock randomly. University of Pennsylvania and University of Illinois researchers found that this gives the shopper a feeling of there being more to choose from. It takes some time for the shopper to scan the choices. The increased time translates in the shopper’s mind to the impression of a larger assortment.
• Remind the customer of the variety of experiences they’ve had when shopping in your store. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Minnesota, and New York University say the reason this works is that we often forget all of the variety we’ve actually had in our lives and instead focus on how repetitive our experiences have been. By reminding the customer of prior buying trips—or asking the customer if there have been prior buying trips—we generate a sense of variety, which, in turn, produces feelings of being in control.

Click below for more:
When Space is Tight, Show Product Differences
Give Shoppers Variety for Control
Randomly Arrange Limited Product Sets