It’s what you’re unaware of that matters

Imagine a shop full of people and you want them to get a move on in order that more can come in so that you can keep the tills ringing. In a non-supermarket environment this might sound tricky, but there is help at hand.

In certain kinds of light, apparently, shoppers will exhibit a tendency to speed up the decision-making process and become rather more active in their approach to heading for the checkouts. Now picture the opposite. You actually want, as many retailers do, people to stay in your shop for longer. It’ll give them more browsing time and, ultimately, may lead to a bigger basket size or the purchase of a higher ticket item. This time, there’s a different light source that makes the shopper feel more relaxed and inclined to linger.

Sound improbable? Maybe so, but a visit to Philips Lighting’s research centre in Eindhoven last week went a considerable way towards raising the matter of how light affects mood and how this can be used to advantage in a retail context.

Indeed, there are retailers who are experimenting with using different kinds of light during the day to encourage different types of shopping behaviour.

All of which sounds a little sci-fi as it’s frequently hard enough to ensure that all of the lights that you have in a store are functioning correctly and providing sufficient candlepower to allow shoppers to view your offer. But it does matter and when taken in combination with other factors such as, say, music, then retailers have an array of mood-enhancing tools that do not involve the administration of some form of Class A drug.

In the case of music, for instance, beware of the cover version of a well-known song. Shoppers react strongly against what they perceive to be bastardised variations on a perfectly decent theme and you may actually persuade them that it’s time to leave the shop if this kind of thing is played too frequently on the in-store music system.

And here’s the point. At a time when shoppers are not that easy to come by and when there appear to be more competitors than ever, any help, visual or aural, must be given at least some thought. Merchantable stock and a pleasing store environment should, to an extent, be a given, but anything that can be done to provide an edge merits consideration. There is of course the corner shop with basic fluorescent tube lighting and Radio 2-style covers of Karma Chameleon, but this may be one of the reasons why it is a shrinking retail arena.

There’s more to all of this than meets the eye or ear.