Waiting in line at the Best Buy this morning gave me time to ponder, and then not make, an impulse purchase of Sports Illustrated or a Coke.
And then to remember that the 12 minutes I spent in line was not an accident, it might have been a bit too long than Best Buy would like, but most stores want you to wait a while.
You can date the science of trying to understand consumers to around the end of the nineteenth century. (I have written about this here, and can also recommend this book)
One of the first ideas the pioneers of scientific selling found to work well was suggesting associated goods. So, if someone was buying a dress, you should suggest a blouse. Likewise, you should put shoelaces and shoe polish in a little display on the counter at the shoe store.
Professional advice on how to lay out a store -- what to put where for maximum sales -- can be found as early as the late nineteenth century. Some of the early stuff was terribly unscientific, and laughable to modern eyes, such as the suggestion that a strict division between male and female departments should be observed. Men shouldn't have to walk past perfume to find a new tie, for example.
But pretty quickly, store managers and retailing academics and consultants, realized things we take for granted now; like the placement of 'heavy' or costly items at the back of the store (or the top floors). Hence the TVs residing towards the back at the Best Buy, and the furniture department being on the top floor of Marshall Fields.
Yet my reading of the pre-WWII sales literature suggests that there was a caution against pushing the customer too far. The explicit suggestion of unrelated goods was frowned upon. You shouldn't suggest a frying pan to a woman buying a hat, for example.
And the Best Buy sales clerk who answered my question about digital camera memory did not suggest I buy a Coke, he merely pointed me to the counter with the shortest line where I still had to wait for twelve minutes with all the temptations of Sports Illustrated and Coke in front of me ...
Posted by robe0419 at December 9, 2004 3:58 PM