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Most modern supermarket chains are organized in such a way that location data should be available (or at least calculable). To assert that there is no "system"
by barbecue_sauce 6y ago
Most modern supermarket chains are organized in such a way that location data should be available (or at least calculable). To assert that there is no "system" to a store's layout and that employees know through "experience and gut-feeling" means that this retailer was not conforming to industry norms or was just not a very large retailer. All supermarkets have some sort of product taxonomy, categories and subcategories, that influence the macro-placement of a product within the store. This discipline is known as "space planning", where large categories are placed within the foot print of a store's layout. Within the category placement, stores use "planograms", which are shelf-by-shelf layouts of which products go where, how many facings they have, how much footage is designated to the sub-category, etc. While its true that workers for the most part know the locations of items by experience, this experience is informed by their ever growing knowledge/intuition of this taxonomy. (Usually, products are organized by aisle in the backroom when the delivery comes in; workers are simply taking groups of products that have already been organized out to the floor). The planograms themselves are usually stored in a database, and this data could be cross-referenced with other common data sources (product, pricing, etc.) to determine store location.
- mark-r 6y agoYou forgot about the manufacturers who pay for specific product placement. Sometimes the store workers will only have a vague idea because the supplier has been given full responsibility for shelf layout.
- barbecue_sauce 6y agoThis usually only applies to certain categories and depends on the pricing model of the supermarket (and the supplier/purchaser power dynamics that depend mostly on the size of the retailer). Soda, chips, crackers and cookies are the most prominent categories that have any significant amount of placement power, and that's mostly because the big players use a direct store delivery model that helps alleviate labor costs at the store level.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoApparently, you are not familiar with Trader Joes. Some (all?) of their stores regularly rearrange the entire store. My assumption has been that they are hoping for you to serendipitously discover new products/categories and purchase them. The produce section generally seems to remain fixed.
- barbecue_sauce 6y agoRearrangements like this come from the top down. They are systematic, and done using the same planogramming techniques as most large scale retailers.
- thomk 6y agoSlightly offtopic of this discussion but I am wondering if you (or anyone) knows why Home Depot does not set up every single store the same, identical way? Sometimes stores are mirror images of each other and sometimes electrical is in the front and sometimes its in the back. It seems so inefficient. I can sort of understand having the garden center on either side of the building depending on the lot but the inside of the store being different from location to location is baffling to me. Wouldn't the entire ecosystem from people who stock shelves, to customers to store managers benefit from an identical layout in every store nationwide? I'm picking on home depot here but the same question could be asked of any big box store.
- kohtatsu 6y agoThey could have a minimap at the start of the store to alleviate it too. Perhaps they simply don't mind customers having to wander or ask though.
- cosmie 6y agoI feel your frustration with Home Depot in particular - I live right in between two stores with wildly different layouts, and it drives me bonkers. One store seems to have the "traditional" layout, that I can successfully navigate off of general muscle memory from stores past. The other has departments placed so differently that I end up walking to where something "should" be, register I'm in the weird store, and open up the minimap in the app to find where I actually need to go. From what I can tell, it's based mostly on optimizing to the local foot traffic. The one that throws me off seems to be more consumer focused. It's in a suburban area and has a _lot_ more internal space dedicated to home decor (lighting, curtains, flooring, etc). Then every other department seems to be rejiggered like Tetris blocks to fit within the remaining space. The store with the more intuitive/familiar layout has mostly the same product assortment, but far less space dedicated to displays and "consultation" style areas (the consumer oriented store has an entire section carved out for custom curtains, complete with an associate consultation counter).