Why We Buy Read Online Free PDF Page B

Here’s a good example, from a chain drugstore in a Massachusetts mall. This was the first mall store owned by this particular company, and so management was eager to see the results. Based solely on total sales, our client was pleased overall, and in particular with how the aspirin section of the store was performing.
    But based on all our many previous studies both of drugstores and of the aspirin category, one crucial figure was on the low side. The product conversion rate—the percentage of shoppers who bought—was below what we expected. In other words, plenty of customers stopped at the aspirin section and picked up and read the packages, but too few of them actually bought aspirin. And the conversion rate for aspirin is usually high—it’s not the kind of product you idly browse; you tend to go to that aisle only when you’re in need. So we spent some time specifically watching the aspirin shelves, and we trained a video camera on them, too.
    Over the course of three days, a pattern emerged. The aspirin was displayed on a main aisle of the store, on the path to some refrigerated cases of soft drinks, which tended to draw a great many customers to that part of the store. That might lead one to expect that the aspirin would sell well, but just the opposite happened. The main customers for cold drinks were teenagers, and our observation showed many of them entering and making a beeline for the coolers. In fact, this was a favorite place for the mall’s young employees to grab a quick cold soda during breaks.
    These young shoppers were supremely uninterested in aspirin. The shoppers, often seniors, who did want aspirin stood a little nervously at the shelves, searching for their usual brand or figuring out which was the better deal while also trying to stay clear of the teenagers tearing down the aisle. In fact, a substantial number of aspirin shoppers became so irritated or thrown off balance by the teenagers that they would prematurely break off their browsing and walk away empty-handed. It was a modified version of the butt-brush effect—the shoppers weren’t being jostled exactly, just a little rattled. You could see it plainly on thevideotape—some customers were practically cringing and hugging the shelves, not the ideal shopping position. And when we timed shoppers, we found that they were spending less time at the shelves than our experience led us to expect.
    This is something that comes up in our work all the time: A store has more than one constituency, and it must therefore perform several functions, all from the same premises. Sometimes those functions coexist in perfect harmony, but other times—especially in stores selling diverse goods, like cold drinks and medicines—those functions clash. We also saw this in a Harley-Davidson dealership, where a roughly three-thousand-square-foot showroom has to make room for well-off male menopause victims looking to recover their virility by buying bikes, blue-collar gearheads who are there for spare parts, and teenage dreamers interested in the Harley-logo fashions. All three groups want nothing to do with one another. When a premises’ functions clash, a way must be found to accommodate as many uses as possible. In this drugstore, we advised our client about what we had learned and suggested a counterintuitive move—that the aspirin be relocated to someplace off the main drag. Fewer total customers would come upon it, we knew, but more aspirin would be sold. When they moved the shelves, sales rose by 20 percent.
    We performed research for a large bookstore that had recently put a big table of discounted books just inside the entrance, where every customer would see it first thing. And it performed admirably—almost everyone stopped for at least a cursory browse, and the percentage that bought at least one book was high. Which meant that, according to the cash register tape, the table was a resounding