Stimulate the taste buds!
Product tastings can contribute to a pleasant shopping experience and positively affect sales.
Welcoming staff
A client-oriented approach is always beneficial. By personally addressing each customer who enters the store, you make him feel welcome. The staff should behave proactively without being intrusive. With real friendliness, helpfulness and product knowledge you make sure that a customer feels safe and has a positive shopping experience.
Pay attention to overstimulation!
Although focusing on all of the customers’ senses is a strength to create a pleasant store experience, it also holds the risk of over-stimulating the customer by exposing him to too much information (i.e. too many texts, references, scents, products, etc.) Try to create a good balance and put stimuli in the right proportion, fitting with and in congruence with the concept.
Colour as an eyecatcher
Drawing attention to a specific product assortment can be done by placing it on a display in a bright, warm colour, thus catching the eye of the customer and bringing him/ her to the display. In the retail context, warm and vivid colours such as red activate, animate and create dynamism, while shades of yellow tend to stimulate the customer intellectually. White shades are perceived as “distant”.
Artificial lighting: making the right choice is an art
Equipments with high light values in a shop interior create a less cosy atmosphere, yet this choice of a brighter light does result in a more intense perception of the space and the products. By contrast, an interior with fewer bright lights is considered to be less dynamic and more distant.
Accent lights make your products shine
To draw customers to a specific product, it is best to choose for accent lighting in a warm-white colour. In doing so, you create a positive feeling for the customer through associations of increased perceptions of cosiness, vividness and decreased tension. By adding light to a product display, you will encourage customers to spend more time there, touch more products and actually take them in their hands. A higher level of light on the display induces feelings of enthusiasm and pleasure, in turn increasing their approach behaviour.
Colour your store interior!
The application of colour in a store interior can influence customer behaviour. The choice of colour can determine how customers perceive the store and product image, as well as the atmosphere in the store. The use of cool colours (versus warm colours) in fashion stores lead to higher buying intentions, better evaluations and also stimulate customers to return to the store.
Scent & music tempo
As already mentioned in guideline 22, it is important to create coherence between smell and music in a physical store. The harmonization of these two ambient signals will positively impact the “approach” and impulsive buying behaviours of customers as well as their satisfaction. For instance, it is best to diffuse a less exciting smell, such as lavender, in combination with a slow music tempo, rather than with more exciting music. By contrast, you may play exciting music with a high tempo in combination with an exciting scent, such as grapefruit, to create a more positive effect on the approach behaviour of the customer.
Scents & music volume
Paying attention to the combination of scent and music, and in particular the volume of the music, used in a physical store is important. You can lift the customers’ sense of pleasure and satisfaction to a higher level through the application of a suitable combination of scent and music. This will also positively influence the time spent in store by the customers, as well as their expenses. Loud music, combined with an aroma can prolong a store visit, and this regardless of the customer’s mood. If it fits your brand/ store’s theme, why not consider diffusing a female scent, such as vanilla, and playing loud music to appeal to women between the ages of 14 and 25?
Music and colour: effects on emotions
The two customer feelings of excitement and pleasure are most often associated with the tempo of a selected music (see guidelines ‘17’ and ‘18’). You may further positively stimulate these emotions by choosing music with a high tempo and associating it with the use of warm colours (such as red) in the physical store. By contrast, lower-tempo music works best in combination with cooler colours (such as blue).
The combination of colour and music is also important in online retailing. Please note, however, that in an online environment, emotions tend to be more positively influenced by cooler colours, which is clearly different from the approach in a physical store.