Wheel Up Sales with Wheelbarrow Handles

How nice it would be to have a shopper come up to the checkout station pushing a big wheelbarrow filled with merchandise to buy! But the reason the wheelbarrow is so full may have as much to do with the design of the handles as with the capacity of the bin. And the drive on the shopper to increase their purchases is probably due more to pulling than to pushing.
     An electromyography study based at City University of London and University of Innsbruck showed how a person’s extensor muscles of the upper arm are activated when moving a standard shopping cart forward while grabbing the horizontal handle. We push that cart. On the other hand—or hands, in this case—if the shopping cart has parallel handles like those on a wheelbarrow, moving it forward activates the flexor muscles. We’re pulling toward ourselves as we push the wheelbarrow. This matters because, oddly enough, a pulling action increases the motivation to satisfy our wants. We tend to purchase more items.
     An explanation for this influence of arm flexion on purchase preferences is that over our lifetime, we associate pulling our arms toward ourselves with acquiring pleasurable objects. Pulling the arm toward the body activates subconscious expectations of short-term pleasure, and the arm pullers look to fulfill those expectations.
     Pushing an object away from ourselves, as when navigating a shopping cart through an aisle, subconsciously potentiates brain traces of rejecting items which are not immediately pleasurable. This pushing effect is nowhere near as strong as the pulling effect. Still, researchers at Erasmus University-Rotterdam, Aston University, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven speculate that requiring a customer to push a door to enter a store will lower by a little the likelihood of selling pleasure-oriented items. They also report that a shopper carrying a basket instead of pushing a cart is almost seven times as likely to purchase candy rather than fruit as a snack.
     The team at City University of London and University of Innsbruck verified that the arm flexion when navigating a shopping cart with two parallel handles instead of the one horizontal handle tends to increase purchases of a range of items, including frozen foods, beverages, and even cleaning products, as well as sweets.
     You won’t replace all your standard shopping carts with wheelbarrows. But having shoppers flex their arms while shopping, as long as shopper comfort is adequate, can increase purchase totals.

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