Gruen transfer
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Another bizarre thing was positioning items right on the edge of the shelf, as if they are about to fall off. Apparently this creates some kind of psychological impulse as well.
This practice was called "zoning" where I used to work. It was explained to me that people think the shelves are more full and will report in surveys etc. that the store has a better selection.
But the shelves were getting bare. there was space around cans and bottles on the shelves, and there were a limited number in each row.
It definitely gave you a feeling of impending demise. That the store was sad and unhealthy, and that prosperity was limited.
also, all of this stuff also works in casinos, where every part of the design is carefully chosen.
Dimmer warm lighting, since you and your companions always look happier and healthier even a 4am when complexions are actually pale, eyes are bleary, and makeup is smudged.
- “There’s only one facing of these hard drives”. - “There aren’t customers, go face up”.
I haven’t worked retail in well over a decade yet I still sometimes subconsciously face up shelves when I go shopping, especially if I take something off a shelf. It’s a curse.
And I also still do the casual facing up. It's kind of satisfying, but also my wife is a bit short so there are times when someone her height can't see any stock left and I've had to dig for it so I guess it's nice to be helpful and bring it forward so people can at least see it's there.
> I haven’t worked retail in well over a decade yet I still sometimes subconsciously face up shelves when I go shopping, especially if I take something off a shelf. It’s a curse.
Same here!
Worked at a couple of fashion retailers after Woolies and will also ensure clothes hangers are always facing the same way.
Still do it, too, when I happen on the occasion. Partly that's because it's no effort and it helps keep the store looking nice, because I shop there too, and because Giant management gives the people who work there more than enough problems already.
And partly it's because fronting shelves in passing, in the days when stocking and bagging were my summer job in high school, was what prompted the first compliment I ever had in my life that I knew I'd really earned. Leaving things to look like they're about to fall off a shelf isn't how you get told "you ain't no scrub," by a man who looks as if he's worked that store for five hundred years and has absolutely no reason to waste words he doesn't mean on a weird nerdy high school kid. So I do it right.
Moving your glass to the edge is how you say, "Please refill my glass." Similarly, if you're in a Chinese restaurant, flip the lid upside-down on the teapot to ask for more tea.
Many people might not even notice the items are present if they're far back inside the shelves. I can see how making the items prominently visible and easy to grab would also increase impulse buys.
That's cold. I quite wonder why.
Nevertheless, I found this article extremely difficult to read. Its "Description" barely describes it, seems to contradict itself, and somehow just makes my head hurt trying to parse it. Is this attempting self-exemplification?
He wanted shopping centers to be like the a nice European town or city shopping street - self-contained shops around the outside and 'town square' type broad pedestrian spaces in the middle that were open, public/community focussed, full of light and trees, and hopefully connected for pedestrians to other areas of a town. He saw this as a good alternative to the car-clogged main streets (with frequently no open space and narrow, poorly maintained footpaths) that were common in post WWII America.
What he objected to was the 'square'/circulation area becoming psychologically overwhelming experiences (complex layout, sensory overload, full of advertising billboards, constant changes, no links to other pedestrian areas, etc.) which was adopted by most shopping centres as their studies showed that it meant people bought more (I think he called it 'a machine for spending' or similar) but (for Gruen at least) it killed any sense of a true benign European 'pedestrian street' or 'town square' that he wanted to bring to America.
Social media & their ilk UI is likely not a mistake (eg youtube, X, netflix) given it nakedly optimizes engagement.
In my case I only picked up the phone to do TFA. Which expired because I got distracted and now I need to log in again :(
You're assuming someone is actually thinking about these design changes. Constantly changing things around based on detailed telemetry is effectively doing backpropagation by hand - the result doesn't need to make any sense, it only has to improve the metrics with each change.
Covers the techniques, explains campaigns, analyzes ads etc.
I go to the more expensive grocery store in my town simply because they never move anything. I can get my staples, vegetables, and eggs at the pace of a brisk walk. I'm in and out in under fifteen minutes.
They did move the organic section once about ten years ago. People still bring it up.
In the UK, the supermarkets were extremely prone to confusing deals (like two-for-one and worse), but they dialed that down a lot since Aldi and Lidl entered the market with much, much simpler propositions. Customers might fall for your shenanigans once already in the shop, but it turns out they do prefer shops with fewer shenanigans in the first place.
So it's not that they move items, but they do place some items so illogically that my brain won't remember where. I can get maybe 80% of my shopping done in 10 minutes, hunting for the remaining 20% can take 20 minutes.
Also why doesn't Lidl sell pita bread?
There's lots of stuff they don't sell, keeping the list of items small is part of the strategy of both Aldi and Lidl. Why pita bread in particular didn't make the cut for Lidl, I don't know.
I can see how the people who design malls will try to sell up their magic 'Gruen transfer' powers to mall developers. But how much of this is wishful thinking?
Reminds me of the alleged magic power of Facebook ads to eg swing elections.
... but the preferred candidates of the founders of Facebook and Google etc still losing elections. (I'm fairly sure comparative technocrats like Mitt Romney or Michael Bloomberg and so on would be more to their liking than the people who are actual front-runners in the elections.)
E.g. the way startups work with equity and shares and everything in between is also convoluted and grandiose - and makes people choose irrationally.
I’m sure there are more examples.
Classic examples would be escalators: They can be arranged in an alternating pattern so you can enter the next "up" escalator as you exit one, or to make you walk around the escalator tower before you can take the next one. Or, in a particularly frustrating mall, scattered randomly throughout the building (different locations on each floor) so you also have to search for it first.
This definitely makes the customer see more of the product/mall... but especially these extreme forms also make the customer (subconsciously or consciously) hate the place and avoid it in the future. I've noticed malls and department stores ease up on these kind of tactics over the past decades, probably because they realized this effect.
Which also makes me wonder: The amount a customer that enters ends up buying is likely easily measured, while the long-term effect on customer attraction/retention is much harder to measure. So it may be one of the many situations where the thing that is easily measurable gets attention while neglecting a possibly more important, but harder to measure thing. Is there a term for that effect?
> The Gruen transfer is a psychological phenomenon in which an idealised hyperreality is realized by deliberate reconstruction, providing a sense of safety and calm through exceptional familiarity. In a speech in London in 1978, Victor Gruen disavowed shopping mall developments as having "bastardised" his ideas: "I refuse to pay alimony for those bastard developments."
(citing in case the article ever gets edited in the future)
Based on these descriptions it sounds more like Victor Gruen first came up with the technique described in the second paragraph, with good intentions behind it. Then, after implementing said ideas, the effect described first was discovered, and mall owners and other shops started doing this on purpose.
Maybe it would be better, and also more fair to Victor Gruen, to explicitly distinguish two as "Gruen transfer" and "Gruen effect", with the transfer causing the effect?
(also, as an aside: assuming my interpretation is correct, it's kind of funny that for once Stigler's Law of Eponymy[0] doesn't apply, but in a monkey's paw kind of twist it still backfired)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigler%27s_law_of_eponymy
My first order of business upon entering an Ikea is finding the map, checking the shortcuts, and going straight to where I need to go. Always feels a little naughty with how they position the flappy doors between areas, like I'm walking through a staff-only entrance, and I guess that's intentional.
I guess we should swap roles for a bit to correct the issue!
I'm very quick since I'm on a mission. I don't like the process of browsing but enjoy completing lists (I blame video games), there's a strange enjoyment folding that paper to hide the completed sections. When we go together my wife just wanders off knowing she needs 2 things for work snacks or for the dogs or something and by the time I've found her, I finished the entire shop and she's barely carrying 7 items since she didn't need a basket for just 2 things. Totally different mindset, she would say I worry too much, I would say I like certainty where I can have it.
Those specific items need a full-size map of where every specific type is placed; and/or clearly visible large labels on the shelves/boxes. Yes, a significant part of the population - myself included - has to resort to hunting for labels or doing image search on their phones, to save themselves from the shame of asking a store worker which one of this green stuff is the "blue peanut pepper broccoli" or whatever it is their partners put on their shopping lists.
There's s tangent to be made about the internet and social media.
Unlocking my smartphone feels kind of similar.
Gruen transfer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16845078 - April 2018 (58 comments)
Keeps my shopping time low.