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> I really dislike large stores. They are so overwhelming. I find the average grocery store in the US to be way too big. Some retailers actually intentionally

> I really dislike large stores. They are so overwhelming. I find the average grocery store in the US to be way too big. Some retailers actually intentionally make the stores overwhelming and disorienting since they believe that it increases sales. I worked at Walmart for one summer during my undergrad. We had to re-shelve a ton of items, moving them from one aisle to another. It made no sense to me. I asked the manager why we are doing this and he said that moving items from one location of the store to another forces customers to stay longer in the store and walk through more aisles while they search for the item that they want. They actually want to make it slightly difficult to find something since it forces people to spend more time in the store. The manager said that the data shows that the longer people are in the store, the more that they buy, so they try to make people spend as much time in the store as possible to increase the likelihood they make an "impulse purchase". (Granted, this seems to confuse correlation with causation, since time in the store isn't directly leading to people buying more stuff. Surely people who buy a lot of items take more time to get the items, but I personally think forcing people to wander around the store is mostly going to just annoy people, myself included. That said, there is apparently a large enough percentage of people who may buy more because of this, and some retailers make that apparent tradeoff to increase sales.)

lastofthemojito 3y ago
> Some retailers actually intentionally make the stores overwhelming and disorienting since they believe that it increases sales. Costco being a prime example. Not sure if all of the stores are laid out the same, but the ones I've been into can generally be described as "make it through a gauntlet of novel, ever-changing stuff that attempts to lure you into impulse purchases on your way to the back of the store, where the staples you came for are located, then make your way back to the front of the store, though another orgy of consumer products, and hey, you've already said no to the fleece vest and the shrimp shu mai so you might as well treat yourself to the 3 pound jar of chocolate caramels".
- taftster 3y ago
  And, the isles are deliberately[] designed to be hard to see down. You can't just easily spy that 20lb Krusteaz pancake mix, you have to walk through all the baking isle products in order to find it. or so I've read, heard or maybe made up some fiction
pasttense01 3y ago
This kind of behavior leads to the growth of small stores where you can get in and out quickly--Dollar General and other dollar stores in the case of Walmart.

lastofthemojito 3y ago

> Some retailers actually intentionally make the stores overwhelming and disorienting since they believe that it increases sales. Costco being a prime example. Not sure if all of the stores are laid out the same, but the ones I've been into can generally be described as "make it through a gauntlet of novel, ever-changing stuff that attempts to lure you into impulse purchases on your way to the back of the store, where the staples you came for are located, then make your way back to the front of the store, though another orgy of consumer products, and hey, you've already said no to the fleece vest and the shrimp shu mai so you might as well treat yourself to the 3 pound jar of chocolate caramels".

taftster 3y ago
And, the isles are deliberately[] designed to be hard to see down. You can't just easily spy that 20lb Krusteaz pancake mix, you have to walk through all the baking isle products in order to find it. or so I've read, heard or maybe made up some fiction

pasttense01 3y ago

This kind of behavior leads to the growth of small stores where you can get in and out quickly--Dollar General and other dollar stores in the case of Walmart.