Shops’ ‘secret’ floor patterns make you linger longer
THEY are facing fierce competition from internet interlopers which took a record £1.9billion from online shoppers during the recent Black Friday sales.
So stores are hitting back with a new tactic to help persuade the public to spend their hard-earned cash on the high street instead – by slowing the pace at which people walk along the aisles.
Researchers found that if they taped lines across the floor, people spent longer to get to the end of the aisles, thus browsing longer and spending more. The closer together the lines, the longer they dawdled. By contrast, researchers found shoppers sped up when the gaps between the lines were wider.
Academics, who observed 4,000 people in a series of experiments, said that changing the distances tapped into people’s subconscious desire to reach their ‘goal’ – in this case the end of the aisle. If the lines were 20in apart, it created an optical illusion making the end of the aisle appear further away, and shoppers tended to slow their pace to conserve energy.
In subsequent tests slower shoppers were found to be much better at recalling what products they had seen than those who sped through, making them far more likely to reach for their wallets. The findings are revealed in a new study entitled ‘Altering Speed of Locomotion’.
Co-author Professor Nico Heuvinck, of the IESEG School of Management in Lille, said stores may want to slow shoppers down in aisles with high-margin products, but speed them up in other areas to avoid crowding.
Mr Heuvinck said similar techniques were used at accident blackspots by painting lines closer together on the road, giving motorists the false impression they were driving faster. He added: ‘People don’t realise they are acting in this way. It is a subconscious process.’