SignageWire

Grocers Might Be Marketing to Customers' Backsides

Author: WireSpring on 2009-01-12 15:16:14

This piece in AdAge highlights some findings from research firm Relevation Research:

[T]he way people approach grocery checkout tends to vary greatly.

Some people push the whole cart straight through and toss the goodies forward onto the counter, while others deliberately step up front and pull the wire basket through and unload onto the conveyer.

Most of you pull
The majority of people are, in fact, pullers, with almost three-fourths (74%) of those surveyed saying they pull into the lane. And contrary to what Relevation researchers hypothesized, men and women are equally likely to be pullers.

So what? Well, while it may only seem to be a simple and interesting insight into human behavior, it could actually mean a lot to the grocery stores, retailers and marketers that make significant sales by marketing to people who might not be, in fact, pushing their carts through the lane at the front of the store. Could all that in-store marketing be, well, backward?

Our take:

We've seen this on a number of occasions while scouting checkout channel digital signage installations. While the vast majority of people seem to approach the checkout line pushing the cart, once they get into the aisle itself, a very large number (74% according to the above research) turn around and then pull the cart in behind them.  While this may or may not make for easier unloading of the cart, it does mean that all of the POP and digital displays facing forward can't be seen by the shopper.

Whether or not this has any real impact on the efficacy of said POP and digital displays remains to be seen. But common sense suggests that it should.

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