You are entitled to be upset: what in the world is the retailer thinking? Doesn't he know that store display is supposed to be orderly and predictable and completely without surprises?
Like it or not, as international retailers troop into the Indian market, and as e-marketplaces make life miserable for traditional retailers, many of them are employing new tricks so that shoppers stay longer and run up a larger bill.
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In an earlier column, I had spoken about how traditional retailers are trying to migrate online and working to make the shopping experience more seamless ("Welcome to the omni-channel marketplace", August 12). The game is not just about deploying technology to own new platforms; it is also about how you can deploy the store to enhance your business. And the amount of research and data-gathering that's going on behind the retail till screens is not funny. The frequent changes in store layouts that I just described are the result of one line of research that suggests that too much order is not good for the retail business.
The argument goes something like this. The store aisles follow the logic on which a retailer categorises the products and, as such, they do not necessarily encourage customers to browse and discover. So you have to add a dose of chaos to your design, so that the auto-pilot customer is stopped in her tracks and forced to change her original "path to purchase".
But why is this planned disorder necessary in the first place? Because of the way the average Indian shopper goes about the job. She will meticulously put down everything she wants on a list and head to the nearest supermarket where she will get her needs under one roof with some discounts thrown in, or make her way to a marketplace where she will get most of the items on her list in the same general vicinity. She will go there early on every month to do most of her shopping and drop by every week or once in 10 days for a top-up. She knows what she wants and she doesn't idle around the shop aisles.
One would have thought this customer is every retailer's dream right? But as it turns out, she is not.
Researchers say when a customer gets accustomed to a store layout she goes into "auto pilot" mode when she walks in. Which means she has a pre-determined path to purchase - she manoeuvres her way around mounds of products, through the shop aisles, around other people's trolleys, all the while striking off the items on her list as she puts them in her basket and checks out. That's convenient for her - she saves good time and money - but the retailer is left wondering how can he nudge her to explore a bit more, visit sections she has no reason to visit, discover new brands and products the store has started stocking or simply give in to some indulgence shopping.
That's why he needs to ruffle things up a bit, so she loses her way, in a sense. And then find products and sections she wouldn't have in the ordinary scheme of things. That's something Spencer's Retail, among a handful of other players in India, is trying out in some of its stores, Nikhil Ojha, head of Bain India's strategy practice, tells me.
Messing up your store is one thing, but sizing up customers in another ball game altogether. Of course, we're used to the cameras and over-zealous security people tracking us inside the store just to make sure we don't shoplift. We get it. But what's downright spooky is that some brick-and-mortar stores are tracking patrons through the wi-fi signals that their smartphones beep out to determine browsing habits and eventually send these shoppers customised advertisements based on their in-store behaviour.
The experiments by brick-and-mortar retail store like a Nordstrom, Cabela, or Family Dollar have raised a stink on social media, but some of these guys, including many Indian stores, continue to gather data about the shoppers' behaviour and moods to pick up information as detailed as the shopper's gender, body type, how long she looks at a piece of, say, innerwear before buying it or how many minutes she spends in, say, the snack food aisle.
So next time you head to a Benetton store, just remember it is testing such technologies to decide matters like store design or customised coupons.