Store Layout, Design and Visual

Merchandising
18-2
Store Design Objectives

■ Implement retailer’s strategy

■ Influence customer buying behavior
■ Provide flexibility
■ Control design and maintenance costs
■ Meet legal requirements

18-3
Store Design and Retail Strategy

The primary objective of store design is implementing the retailer’s strategy

Meets needs of target market

Builds a sustainable competitive advantage
Displays the store’s image

(c) Brand X Pictures/PunchStock

C. Borland/PhotoLink/Getty Images

18-4
McDonald’s remodeled its stores to better appeal to European customers
18-5
In India, a retailer finds key to success is clutter
18-6
Influence Customer Buying Behavior

■ Attract customers to store

■ Enable them to easily locate merchandise
■ Keep them in the store for a long time
■ Motivate them to make unplanned purchases
■ Provide them with a satisfying shopping experience

H. Wiesenhofer/PhotoLink/Getty Images

18-7
Tradeoff in Store Design

Ease of locating
merchandise for
planned purchases

(c) image100/PunchStock
Giving customers
adequate space to
shop

Exploration of store,
impulse purchases
Royalty-Free/CORBIS

Productivity of using
this scarce resource
for merchandise
18-8
Store Design

■ Layouts
■ Signage and
Graphics
■ Feature
Area

18-9
Store Layouts

■ To encourage customer exploration and help customers move through the

stores
 Use a layout that facilitates a specific traffic pattern

 Provide interesting design elements

■ Types of Store Layouts

 Grid

 Racetrack

 Free Form

18-10
 Grid Layout

■ Easy to locate merchandise

■ Does not encourage
customers to explore store
 Limited site lines to
merchandise
■ Allows more merchandise
to be displayed
■ Cost efficient
■ Used in grocery, discount,
and drug stores: Why?

18-11
18-12
Racetrack Layout (Loop)

■ Loop with a major aisle that has access to

departments
■ Draws customers around the store
■ Provide different viewing angles and encourage
exploration, impulse buying
■ Used in department stores

18-13
JCPenney Racetrack Layout

18-14
Example of Race Track Layout

PhotoLink/Getty Images

18-15
Free-Form (Boutique) Layout

■ Fixtures and aisles arranged

asymmetrically
■ Provides an intimate,
relaxing environment that
facilitates shopping and
browsing
■ Pleasant relaxing ambiance
doesn’t come cheap – small
store experience
■ Inefficient use of space
■ More susceptible to
shoplifting – salespeople can
not view adjacent spaces.
■ Used in specialty stores and
upscale department stores
18-16
Example of Free-Form Layout

18-17
 Example of Boutique Area

Michael Evans/Life File/Getty Images

18-18
Usage of Signage and Graphics

■ Location – identifies the location of merchandise and guides customers

■ Category Signage – identifies types of products and located near the
goods
■ Promotional Signage – relates to specific offers – sometimes in windows
■ Point of sale – near merchandise with prices and product information
■ Lifestyle images – creates moods that encourage customers to shop

18-19
18-20
Suggestions for Effectively Using Signage

■ Coordinate signage to store’s image

■ Use appropriate type faces on signs
■ Inform customers
■ Use them as props
■ Keep them fresh
■ Limit the text on signs
■ Use appropriate typefaces on signs

18-21
Digital Signage

Visual Content delivered digitally through a centrally managed and

controlled network and displayed on a TV monitor or flat panel
screen
■ Superior in attracting attention
■ Enhances store environment
■ Provides appealing atmosphere
■ Overcomes time-to-message hurdle
■ Messages can target demographics
■ Eliminates costs with printing, distribution and installing traditional
signage

18-22
Feature Areas

Areas within a store designed to get the

customers’ attention
Feature areas
 Entrances
 Freestanding displays
 Cash wraps (POP counters,
checkout areas)
 End caps
 Promotional aisles
 Walls
 Windows
 Fitting rooms
PhotoLink/Getty Images

18-23
Space Management

■ The space within stores

and on the stores’
shelves are fixtures is a
scare resource
■ The allocation of store
space to merchandise
categories and brands
■ The location of
departments or
merchandise categories
in the store

18-24
 Space Planning

■ Productivity of allocated space (sales/squire foot, sales/linear

foot)
■ Merchandise inventory turnover
■ Impact on store sales
■ Display needs for the merchandise

18-25
Considerations for Merchandise Locations

Percentage of Shoppers
Visiting Different Areas of the Store

You are here

18-26
Prime Locations for Merchandise

■ Highly trafficked areas

 Store entrances
 Near checkout counter
■ Highly visible areas
 End aisle
 Displays

18-27
Location of Merchandise Categories

■ Impulse merchandise – near heavily trafficked areas

■ Demand/Destination merchandise – back left-hand
corner of the store
■ Special merchandise – lightly trafficked areas (glass
pieces, women’s lingerie)
■ Adjacencies – cluster complimentary merchandise next
to each other

18-28
Location of Merchandise within a
Category: The Use of Planograms
■ Supermarkets and drug stores place private-label brands to the right of
national brands – shoppers read from left to right (higher priced national
brands first and see the lower-priced private-label item)
■ Planogram: a diagram that shows how and where specific SKUs should
be placed on retail selves or displays to increase customer purchases

18-29
Learning customers’ movements and
decision-making

■ Videotaping Consumers
 Learn customers’
movements, where they
pause or move quickly, or
where there is congestion
 Evaluate the layout,
merchandise placement,
promotion
■ Virtual Store Software
 Learn the best place to
merchandise and test
how customers react to
new products

18-30
Visual Merchandising: Fixtures

A. Straight rack
B. Rounder
(bulk fixture,
capacity
fixture)
C. Four-way
fixture
(feature
fixture)
D. Gondolas

18-31
Straight Rack

■ Holds a lot of apparel

■ Hard to feature specific styles and
colors
■ Found often in discount and off-price
stores

Royalty-Free/CORBIS
18-32
Rounder

■ Smaller than straight rack

■ Holds a maximum
amount of merchandise
■ Easy to move around
■ Customers can’t get
frontal view of
merchandise

18-33
Four-Way

■ Holds large amount of merchandise

■ Allows customers to view entire garment
■ Hard to maintain because of styles and colors
■ Fashion oriented apparel retailer

18-34
Gondolas

■ Versatile
■ Grocery and discount stores
■ Some department stores
■ Hard to view apparel as
they are folded

Royalty-Free/CORBIS

18-35
Merchandise
Presentation Techniques

■ Idea-Oriented Presentation
■ Style/Item Presentation
■ Color Organization
■ Price Lining
■ Vertical Merchandising
■ Tonnage Merchandising
large quantities of merchandise
displayed together
■ Frontal Presentation
display as much of the product as
possible to catch the customer’s
eye

18-36
Idea-Orientation Presentation

Fifty percent of women get their ideas for clothes from store displays or
window shopping

■ Present merchandise based on a

specific idea or the image of the
store
■ Encourage multiple
complementary purchases
 Women’s fashion
 Furniture combined in room settings
 Sony Style mini-living rooms

18-37
Store Atmospherics

The design of an environment through visual

communications, lighting, colors, music, and scent to
stimulate customers’ perceptual and emotional responses
and ultimately to affect their purchase behavior

Color Lighting

Store Atmosphere

Scent Music
18-38
Lighting

Highlight merchandise
Structure space and
capture a mood
Energy efficient lighting
Downplay features
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc./Lars A. Niki, photographer

18-39
Color

■ Warm colors (red, gold, yellow)

produce emotional, vibrant, hot,
and active responses
■ Cool colors (white, blue, green)
have a peaceful, gentle, calming
effect
■ Culturally bounded
 French-Canadians – respond more
to warm colors
 Anglo-Canadians – respond more
to cool colors

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc./Lars Niki, photographer

18-40
Music

■ Control the pace of store traffic, create an image, and

attract or direct consumers’ attention
■ A mix of classical or soothing music encourage shoppers
 to slow down, relax, and take a good look at the merchandise
 thus to stay longer and purchase more
■ J.C. Penney – different music at different times of the day
 Jazzy music in the morning for older shoppers
 Adult contemporary music in the afternoon for 35-40 year old
shoppers
■ U.S. firm Muzak supplies 400,000 shops, restaurants, and
hotels with songs tailed to reflect their identity

18-41
Scent

Has a positive impact on

impulse buying behavior
and customer satisfaction
■ Scents that are neutral produce
better perceptions of the store
than no scent
■ Customers in scented stores
think they spent less time in the The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc./Gary He, photographer

store than subjects in unscented

stores

18-42
How Exciting Should a Store Be?

Depends on the Customer’s Shopping Goals

■ Task-completion:
a simple atmosphere with slow music, dimmer
lighting, and blue/green colors
■ Fun:
an exciting atmosphere with fast music, bright
lighting, and red/yellow colors

18-43
Web Site Design

■ Simplicity Matters
■ Getting Around – Easy Navigation
■ Let Them See It
 Example: Lands’ End My Virtual Model
■ Blend the Web Site with the Store
■ Prioritize
■ Type of Layout
 When shopping on the Web, customer are interested in speed,
convenience, ease of navigation, not necessarily fancy graphics
■ Checkout
 Make the process clear and appear simple
 Enclose the checkout process
 Make the process navigable without loss of information
 Reinforce trust in the checkout process

18-44
Applying traditional visual merchandising
tactics to the online shopping experience

■ Window Display = Website Homepage

■ Shop Layout = Site Layout
■ In-store Signage = Site Navigation
■ Physical Products = Imagery and Video
■ In-Store Events = Online Social Proof
■ Checkout Line Merchandising = Online
Checkout Optimization

18-45
18-46
18-47