Raise Your Right Hand Awareness

Right-handed people—constituting the large majority of most stores’ customers—are more likely to buy items which are displayed in a way the items can be easily picked up with the right hand. This is true when you encourage shoppers to pick up the items. It’s also true when you’re only showing the item to the prospective purchaser, such as pictured in an ad or demonstrated in front of the person.
     Researchers from Brigham Young University and University of Michigan prepared for their study by creating ads which oriented to the right or the left parts of the illustration most directly related to usage. This included handles on mugs and the placement of forks and spoons. When the orientation was to the right for a product people otherwise liked, the motivation to possess the product became even greater.
     Notice that this means the more effective ad shows a mirror image of the setup for a right-handed person to use the product. The consumer is looking at the ad, so what would be closest to the consumer’s right hand will have been to the left of a person whose image faces us in the ad. Because most people are right-handed, a natural tendency would be to orient photo setups the other way around. The research findings indicate this detracts from the motivational power of the ad.
     For an appreciation of how this applies to in-store demonstrations of a product, think how confusing it can be when the dance teacher faces you while teaching a new move. The instructor might turn her back to you for the demonstration so that when she lifts her right arm, you know to lift your right arm, not your left arm. If facing you, the instructor does best to lift her left arm while giving you verbal instructions to lift your right arm.
     When your salesperson or yourself faces the shopper while demonstrating usage of a product with the intent of having the shopper imagine usage, left becomes right while right becomes left.
     Research findings from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and BI Norwegian Business School indicate all this does depend on the shoppers imagining themselves using the item. These researchers included a condition in which they interfered with participants’ ability to think about situational constraints with usage. In these cases, the orientation of the item to the right or to the left made much less difference.

Click below for more: 
Hand Shoppers An Aid to Imagining Usage 
Reach Out for What Will Touch Your Shoppers