Page 60 - Spring Into Markets

Scanning
Most customers scan from left to right (the same direction that we read) when they are looking at a display. This is often subconsciously done, but something that will help you to maximise sales. The products at the beginning and end of a display are the most noticeable — often the products in the middle are over‐ looked (or quickly forgotten) as customers usually remember what they saw first and last.
Sales achieved
35% 15% 15% 35%
Product 1
Product 2
Product 3
Product 4
Research has proved that in this instance, products 1 & 4 are most likely to be the products that customers see, remember and therefore are more likely to buy. In this example we have shown only four products — imagine being faced with 24 products displayed like this — no wonder research has shown that customers ‘switch off’.
You can create the same effect by adding in a small gap between different product categories — to break up the display and to help create lots of beginning and end displays within your stall. These gaps do not have to be large, just sufficient enough to fool the brain into thinking that it needs to ‘start looking again’.
This is why most High Street retailers do not have enormously long rows of product or equipment, but break their displays up using lots of aisles/equipment. This means that when customers look at the products on display there is a larger number of beginning and end displays — the most noticeable and most remembered! Major food brands often give the supermarkets incentives to display their products at the beginning/end of an aisle (it’s high impact space).
60 Allocating Space Guide 8