Supermarket Aisles May Resemble A Maze, But They're Laid Out With Plenty Of Food For Thought

Supermarket layouts and product placements sway shoppers' decisions.

Fruits and vegetables near store entrances literally provide a fresh first impression. Placing such staples as eggs and milk in the back forces customers to walk by thousands of other items. Peanut butter and jelly coupled on a shelf help shoppers make a connection.

According to industry estimates, 60 percent to 70 percent of what people buy in supermarkets is discretionary - in other words, not on a shopping list. So lots of research goes into directing shoppers through a store and keeping them buying. And now, as supermarkets strive to survive in an increasingly competitive market, they are starting to make their layouts more convenient.

"It's kind of a science," says Peter Dixon, a partner in the New York-based Lippincott and Margulies, which has designed supermarket layouts.

"Different supermarket groups have incredible data on supermarket layouts. Layouts are extremely important."

Layouts are often determined by shopping patterns. And tracking shopping patterns is a lot like being an anthropologist.

Paco Underhill, founder and managing director of the worldwide consumer research firm Envirosell, observes shoppers the way other scientists observe obscure tribes. His staff follows 50,000 to 70,000 shoppers a year, visiting stores, using small video cameras and taking notes.

They've found that people tend to keep to the right when they stroll down the aisles, and that their eyes move left to right as they scan the shelves. So to get someone to connect a store brand of ketchup, for example, with its national-brand counterpart, some supermarkets place the store brand to the right of the national brand.

Underhill's company also has identified a "Decompression Zone," an area near a store entrance in which people adjust their eyes to the light, slow their walk to shopping speed and generally avoid filling their carts. Underhill advises that stores put no items in that zone.

"In general, when we come in the door, it takes us 15 to 20 steps to slow down," he says.

When shoppers do slow down, supermarkets choose carefully what they see first. The ShopRite group, for example, puts the produce section or the bakery at the front of the store.

"We focus on perishable products . . . something that gives a first impression to the person that this is the place to buy the freshest produce," ShopRite spokeswoman Mary Ellen Gowin says.

Supermarkets also pair popular items with not-so-popular ones. Researchers say people tend to avoid certain aisles, either because they don't want to be tempted (in the cookie aisle, for instance) or because they don't need anything (in the detergent aisle, for example). So some supermarkets put attractive or necessary items, such as baby food, on the opposite sides of these lonely aisles.

Within the aisles, food placement on the shelves is never left to chance. Chocolate breakfast cereals are often placed at kids' eye level, for example. And in some cases, food manufacturers pay top dollar to have their products placed at the end-of-aisle displays, which almost every shopper sees.

Some layouts require people to pass by as many items as possible. Horizontal aisles, coupled with the traditional vertical type, make it more likely that customers will wander an interior maze instead of just scooting around the store's perimeter, says Meryl Gardner, associate professor of marketing at the University of Delaware.

And stores with refrigerated food staples in the back - often located there because it's easier to stock them from the back - also prevent people from dashing in and out of the store without passing other items.

How does a supermarket persuade a regular shopper who knows the store's layout to linger in the aisles?

One way, Dixon says, is to add special touches, such as changing the international coffee displays in the coffee aisle. These sorts of displays make customers stop and look instead of hurrying by an aisle.

"People really have a funny psychological orientation to stores," Dixon says. "They want things where they expect them to be, but they get bored if everything's the same all the time."

Supermarkets are starting to do even more to keep shoppers interested.

"The most current thinking is that you build the loyalty and the repeat business by being convenient," Dixon says.

"The ideas that will win at the end of the day are the ones that meet the customers' needs," Dixon says.

Supermarkets are also starting to use atmosphere to sell certain products.

Ann Schlosser, assistant professor of marketing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, found that social goods such as cards and flowers sell better when displayed in an upscale setting. So some supermarkets are using soft lighting and other techniques to set off their flower or greeting-card sections.

Underhill, who has written "Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping" (Simon and Schuster, $25), says he is starting to see more drastic changes in design. One store in New York's Harlem, for example, has a refrigerated room for frozen foods, and offers customers quilted jackets to shop in there. A store in San Antonio, Texas, contains benches throughout so that shoppers can rest.

"Up until the 1990s, the big issues were: Are you everyday low price? Are you promotion-driven?" Underhill says. "As we go into the 21st century . . . it's how do we make ourselves unique? How do we get customer loyalty?"