4 ms·

TIL: People are weird and irrational, and there’s much we don’t understand. Like why do shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 m

TIL: People are weird and irrational, and there’s much we don’t understand. Like why do shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 more at the supermarket?

Lordarminius 8y ago
Counterclockwise is an anti-pattern (at least for me), my guess is that it makes shoppers move more slowly, pay more attention to displayed items and spend more time at the shop.
- gowld 8y ago
  Right-handed people, with their bias toward turning right, tend to walk anti-clockwise when entering a loop from the outside (such as grocery stores), and clockwise when entering from the inside. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/predictable-walking-patterns-counter-clockwise.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human... People who travel anti-clockwise see more stuff, because if they travel clockwise, then they'll turn right and toward the front/exit before they finish a complete loop around the store.
dhimes 8y ago
Anti-clockwise is the mathematically positive direction. Also, NASCAR. Confusing to those who navigate by compass, though. OT amusement: After school and teaching and spending half a career so-encumbered, I took up boating and took a marine navigation course. At first it drove me crazy because all of their + and - direction changes were backwards and I was screwing them up.
laughinghan 8y ago
Only in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, shoppers moving in the clockwise direction spend more money, due to the Coriolis effect.
seanwilson 8y ago
Have you got a link to the study about this? To be honest, I feel a lot of these claims are like nutritional studies, where when you look into it the original study wasn't great or are for highly specific scenarios but the general claim will be spread for decades anyway. For this one for instance, what was being bought? How expensive? How did the prices vary? What about shelf positions? Who were the customers? How many customers? How were they made to pick a direction? How long were they shopping for? What factors were and weren't controlled for? Usually when the controls aren't great, you find that further studies that improve on the controls lead to the measured effect size getting smaller and smaller. Maybe not the case here, I don't know, but I'm very skeptical about general claims that sound hard to measure.

TIL: People are weird and irrational, and there’s much we don’t understand. Like why do shoppers moving in a counterclockwise direction spend on average $2.00 more at the supermarket?

Lordarminius 8y ago

Counterclockwise is an anti-pattern (at least for me), my guess is that it makes shoppers move more slowly, pay more attention to displayed items and spend more time at the shop.

gowld 8y ago
Right-handed people, with their bias toward turning right, tend to walk anti-clockwise when entering a loop from the outside (such as grocery stores), and clockwise when entering from the inside. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/predictable-walking-patterns-counter-clockwise.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human... People who travel anti-clockwise see more stuff, because if they travel clockwise, then they'll turn right and toward the front/exit before they finish a complete loop around the store.

dhimes 8y ago

Anti-clockwise is the mathematically positive direction. Also, NASCAR. Confusing to those who navigate by compass, though. OT amusement: After school and teaching and spending half a career so-encumbered, I took up boating and took a marine navigation course. At first it drove me crazy because all of their + and - direction changes were backwards and I was screwing them up.

laughinghan 8y ago

Only in the Northern hemisphere. In the Southern hemisphere, shoppers moving in the clockwise direction spend more money, due to the Coriolis effect.

seanwilson 8y ago

Have you got a link to the study about this? To be honest, I feel a lot of these claims are like nutritional studies, where when you look into it the original study wasn't great or are for highly specific scenarios but the general claim will be spread for decades anyway. For this one for instance, what was being bought? How expensive? How did the prices vary? What about shelf positions? Who were the customers? How many customers? How were they made to pick a direction? How long were they shopping for? What factors were and weren't controlled for? Usually when the controls aren't great, you find that further studies that improve on the controls lead to the measured effect size getting smaller and smaller. Maybe not the case here, I don't know, but I'm very skeptical about general claims that sound hard to measure.