Slow speedy shoppers with bespoke flooring
11/24/2016
Professor Nico Heuvinck
Based on an interview with Nico Heuvinck on his paper* “Altering speed of locomotion” coauthored with Bram Van den Bergh, Gaby A. C. Schellekens and Iris Vermeir (Journal of Consumer Research, 2016).
New research by Nico Heuvinck and his coauthors explores how retailers could have the power to modulate our walking speed in shops. It seems that changing the distances between lines on the floor can tap into subconscious desires to reach the end of shopping aisles: the closer the end appears, the faster we walk towards the goal.
Biography
Nico Heuvinck is Assistant Professor in Marketing at IÉSEG. He received his PhD in Marketing and Applied Economic Sciences from the University of Ghent in Belgium. His research focuses on attitude theory, consumer behavior, judgment and decision-making, nostalgia, and store atmospherics.
Methodology
Heuvinck and his coauthors made over 4000 observations of shoppers, both in-store and in a lab. They altered markers on the floor to alter the perception of aisle length and thereby modulate human speeds when walking down shopping aisles (altering the distance between markers alters an individual’s perception of the distance to the end goal). The team relates their findings to goal gradient theory: when an individual is closer to their goal (the end of the aisle), they will walk faster to reach it. Meanwhile, participant surveys revealed that slower walking makes shoppers more observant.
Retailers employ different techniques to moderate in-store customer traffic. The most common of these is music. Playing different tempo music can alter shopper walking speed, but what if you wanted consumers to walk at different speeds in different aisles of the shop? Professor Nico Heuvinck explains, “As a retailer, you might want to slow shoppers down in aisles containing high profit margin products, so they have more time to see the products and in-store advertising”. He adds, “In other areas, like the store entrance, you will want to promote swift movement of customers to avoid congestion, crowding and consumer irritation. It has been shown that people spend less time in crowded retail spaces.”
Animal instincts
Heuvinck and co-workers based their experiments on goal gradient theory. This was first developed in the 1930’s, to see what happened to the speed of a rat when it gets close to a goal: the cheese at the end of a runway. The rats were trained to know where the cheese was, and, by dividing the rats’ paths into equal segments, it was observed that a rat would move faster when it got closer to the cheese. This is thought to come down to motivation; when a rat gets closer to the goal, it is more motivated to reach it and moves faster. The big question for Heuvinck was, “Will humans respond to distance change, and perceived distance change, in the same way as rats?” And, in turn, how much are we influenced by automatic rather than deliberate processes?
Humans and the goal gradient effect
“The literature shows us that humans are influenced by the goal gradient effect,” he explains. “Coffee shop loyalty programs have us collecting stamps with the goal of getting a free coffee once we have ten stamps. Initially, there is no hurry to get the stamps. But, when you get closer to the tenth stamp, it has been shown that consumers purchasing speed increases.” The team wanted to see if humans also respond to physical markers that would influence their subconscious desire to reach a goal: the end of a shopping aisle.
Longer aisle, slower shopping
By making thousands of observations of shoppers in both the lab and in real retail settings, Heuvinck and colleagues were able to map their walking speeds. They altered distance between lines of tape on the floor of an aisle and conducted surveys related to object recognition. They found that when lines were closer together, consumer perception was that the end of the aisle was further away, and they walked slower. This is when their recognition was also best. “The results are very robust and we saw significant influence on walking speed time and again,” Heuvinck adds.
Influencing walking speed in a retail environment could lead to changes in sales patterns. “Retailers are interested in increasing sales and the work needs to be developed to provide a link between walking speed influenced by floor pattern, and retail sales,” concludes Heuvinck. He also notes, however, that shoppers are influenced by a number of external factors when they come to make a purchase, and proving this correlation could be difficult.
Practical applications
“Retailers can use our findings to moderate walking speeds in different areas of a retail space,” Heuvinck notes. “They could use different sized tiles or parquet, or make intermediate flooring sections to break up floor spaces. Although we focused on flooring, we think the effect will be seen if walking paths are divided by partitioning the wall or ceiling, by altering shelf length or distance between lighting fixtures. Partitioning has the potential to influence shopping patterns and drive up sales”. He adds that this work is not just limited to retail: “There are potential applications for speed influencing floor patterns in any space where you want to moderate the flow of people. These include busy public spaces such as museums, train stations and airports.”
*Altering speed of locomotion, the Journal of Consumer Research (October 2016). Bram van den Bergh (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University), Nico Heuvinck (IÉSEG), Gaby A. C. Schellekens, and Iris Vermeir (Ghent University).