Supermarket expert Harold Lloyd doesn’t understand why grocers are so worried about Walmart. Rather, he says successful convenience stores like Sheetz and Wawa, as well as drugstore chain Walgreens, are the retailers that grocers should be concerned about—mainly because they’re easy to shop. They excel at what Lloyd refers to as “Flow and Focus.” This means controlling the flow of customers from the parking lot into the store, then controlling their focal point.
Lloyd, of Harold Lloyd Presents, presented “Harnessing the Power of Customer Engagement” during Hillphoenix’s Supermarket Sense workshop in Conyers today. The three-day event ends Thursday.
Walgreens, for example, nearly always builds or opens stores on the “right-hand side of the street going home from work,” according to Lloyd, thus controlling and boosting the “flow” of traffic into its stores.
Right vs. left is important, he notes.
The majority of the population is right handed.
“A right-hand turn for a right-handed person is so much easier,” Lloyd says.
Once a customer is in store, right to left shopping is key, too. In fact, it translates to a 2 percent increase in sales.
Factors affecting flow include:
1. Aisle/Access Width
2. Area Lighting
3. Clear Signage
4. Colored Pathways
5. Aromas
“Focus,” or that which captures the customer’s eye or attention, comes into play next—after just a few steps into the store, Lloyd says.
Ways to enhance stores and products to catch a consumer’s focus include:
1. Contrast Lighting
2. Bright Colors
3. Unusual Displays
4. Compelling Signage
5. Action/Movement
“Don’t make customers think,” Lloyd says. “Make them impulse (buy)…The average customer goes into the store willing to spend $50, and they spend $30. What happened to the other $20? We didn’t entice them.”
Read more about Lloyd’s thoughts on good store design and ways to increase sales, as well as more from the Supermarket Sense workshop, in the November print editions of The Shelby Report.
In the feature photo at top is Harold Lloyd. (Find more photos from the event here.)
