As the nations biggest retailers get into the beauty game, you need to step up your own by learning how your clients shop. The industry’s top expert in consumer behavior Leon Alexander to teach you how to design retail environments that encourage the purchase.
Your’e not Sephora, and you dont want to look as if you are. But you have to admit: Mass retailers know a little something about selling product. Perhaps you could strike a palatable balance if you could retain your emphasis on service while still taking a few cues from the people whose very displays seem able to reach out and flip open consumers wallets.
Your clients are the same people who walk into Crate and Barrel, says Eurisko President Leon Alexander,who also holds a Ph.D. in behavioral psychology. Your environment should be designed around the consumers needs and maximizing the dopamine in the brain to get that consumer into buying mode.
Observations like those have grown a new interdisciplinary field, environmental psychology, which studies the ways that our surroundings influence us. Data gathered by environmental psychologists give retailers the insight to think like a customer.
Should you put products at eye level? How should you arrange them? Since that time, weve learned that its less important to arrange the products a certain way than it is to understand who the shopper is and what she’s looking for. Retailing is not about products; it’s about shoppers.
Indeed, while stylists may refer to their guests and management may attempt to anticipate the behavior of consumers. As a consumer, a woman might be open to a product she reads about it in a magazine, he explains. If that product is hard to acquire, the same woman as a shopper will probably not be as open to it. If you want your client to think like a shopper, make sure your retail space is set up to enable that
Typically, salons with high product sales train and even script their stylists to become partners in retailing. But there is a silent partner working for you as well, and that’s the visual display.
Owners talk a lot about providing an experience for clients, and today’s progressive approach to retailing dovetails with that goal. Pioneers in merchandising are not designing the space around service, Alexander says. They’re designing it around an experience. Allied to great service, this experience inspires consumers to buy happily, return to the salon frequently and recommend their stylist to friends.
Panoramic View
If you have an open floor plan, you’re already ahead in the visual merchandising race, even if your square footage is limited. You should expose the consumer to the greatest amount of merchandising for the longest period of time, says Alexander. When the consumer walks in, she should be able to view multiple displays at staggered heights. For example, in the forefront she might catch a try-me counter, she can see beyond that to a freestanding gondola, behind that she spies a back wall unit and, above it, a graphic sign that identifies the products.
Freestanding units create a slalom effect by giving the consumer an indirect journey to the desk. The height vision should allow the consumer to see above the freestanding merchandise to wall-merchandised units. An accent color at the back of the retail will contribute in driving people to the back of the retail store. (Christie & Co. Salon Spa in New York City)
The ultimate goal of this panoramic view is to lure the shopper to the back of the store and ensure that she passes purchasing opportunities along her path. That’s why grocery stores stock milk and bread in the back, continues Alexander, who urges owners to likewise save the back of the salon for your most essential, or perhaps most popular, retail items.
Color psychology becomes important, Alexander adds, with the spectrum of red through purple/lavender stimulating the brain to want to spend and buy. He recommends choosing a tone within that palette as an accent color to pop at the back of the salon while keeping your walls neutral and avoiding large areas of bright whites or grays, which can cause fatigue or anxiety. Lighting, too, plays a role. An illuminated wall unit will capture the consumers eye and focus her on the product.
Environmental psychology further has uncovered cultural differences in the way people move through a store. For example, a simple habit like driving on the left or right side of the road will determine which way you tend to turn when you enter a shopping milieu. While Americans look along their right side, that’s not true everywhere. According to Eurisko research (euriskodesign.com), this fact alone has led U.S. airport space designers to locate food outlets on the left and gift shops on the right, predicting that people will cross the aisle to eat but may not go as far out of their way to purchase a gift item. Color, too, is subject to cultural influences. While U.S. brides wear white to symbolize purity, in China and other Asian countries it’s the funerals that are dressed in white, the color of mourning.
You can enter any room, and if the lighting is low, the music soft and the walls neutral you’ll begin de-stressing without anybody touching you, says Alexander. That’s the power of environmental psychology. In retailing, environmental psychology works if the furniture is spaced out correctly, lighting is focused on the product, graphic signs are highlighting the merchandise, an accent color is place properly and the smell in the air is congruent with the product. That combination creates a buying environment.
Extend Their Stay
The longer you can hold the shopper’s interest at the product shelves, the higher the retail ticket is likely to be, agree the experts.People today are time-poor, not cash-poor, says Alexander. If you can captivate them for a block of time, they’re likely to spend.
One way salons have been successful in holding clients attention is by providing a sensory experience. Kiosks with try-me samples involve all the senses in the purchase decision as clients see, feel, smell, touch and, in some cases, apply the product. This can develop a powerful connection between shopper and product.
Tasteful, festive holiday bags make simple decorations that have the added impact of reminding clients the salon is the perfect place for last-minute shopping.
Don’t Even Go There
Sometimes following your gut instinct leads you off path, caution the experts. They list some frequent missteps:
- Product displays are placed too close to the entrance. It’s not until the customer is about six feet into the store that she’s adjusted to the differences between the outside and inside, says Leon Alexander. Her nerve endings are picking up all the stimulia new temperature, different lighting. Give her that six-foot space to adapt and transition before you hit her with your Promotion of the Month.
- Too much product is at the styling station. We’re moving away from having a ton of product at the styling station. The client should be looking at only those products that fulfi ll her needs and do not compete with each other.
- Seating is placed by the window. Owners pay thousands of dollars for a billboard to advertise their brand, when you already have oneâyour window, says Alexander. When passersby see only the backs of your clients heads as they sit on comfy couches, you’re losing an opportunity. Besides, you don’t really want people sitting down; you want them shopping.
- Retail is grouped by category rather than by product line. Should you line up all of your mousses together? Sephora tried merchandising by category, and it didn’t work.
Aim to have a brand portfolio that offers a unique benefit with products that do not cannibalize each other. Then all of your brands have a chance to win. - Income is lost by neglecting the impulse buyer. I defy anyone to exit Walmart with only the intended products, says Alexander. Yet no one’s advising you at Walmart;
you’re serving yourself. To address the impulse buyer, Alexander recommends keeping your point-of-purchase displays supersimple. If your client is overwhelmed, he
warns, she’ll just walk out empty-handed. - A campaign is not thought through completely. Let’s say you’re designing a Nioxin display, says Moroney. Don’t put up a sign on your shelf that shouts, Thinning Hair! Who wants to be seen walking up to that product?â A more sensitive and effective message could be an instruction to Ask your stylist about Nioxin’s solutions to thinning hair.
If your best clients are constantly asking about what’s new, build your retail visuals around products that have just been added to a line. If your clients love bargains, make sure to alert them to special value opportunities. Hip clients? Choose a hip line. Luxury-leaning? Go for a classic high-end brand. If you have a young clientele, infuse your visual offering with the energy of bold colors; older people prefer more subtle palettes.Get those colors wrong, cautions Leon Alexander, and your clients
simply won’t relate to your brand.
Sophisticated eye-tracking technology helps manufacturers understand where to place branding for maximum impact which encourages the consumers eye to linger and prompts sales. (Estoterica Salon in Forth Worth, Texas, at left.)
The real goal is reselling, says Alexander.
If the majority of your business comes from a regular clientele, you’re in the business of reselling to them. They purchase a shampoo, and the next time they come in you introduce them to the larger size or an accompanying styling product. Reselling to existing clients is key to your ongoing success.
Happier Holidays
Serious retailing requires continuous shopping, with no breaks. All shelves should be in a line, since the eye loses focus with a break. (Christie & Co. Salon Spa in New York City)
Tell Your Story Visually
Visuals should always tell a story, says Loew. When his firm works with MAC Cosmetics, for example, his goal is to visually feed the image that MAC already has established with its customers. As much as you can tell in that initial visual impact is what I call the story, Loew adds.
People get bored easily, so visual cues should change quarterly, says Loew. The luxury product brands change every season with new colors, he says. If you’re in an area with distinct seasons, you might change the products you highlight according to the humidity factor. When you switch the products, your story changes.
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