The grocery store of YOUR Future

As you step through the threshold of the automatic double doorway and into the entranceway, you detect a slight hint of lavender – neurologically tested for its soothing emotional effects. Another set of automatic double doors quickly part as you’re hit with the all-encompassing olfactory experience of freshly baked loaves of bread. Sky blue walls (blue has become associated with steadfastness, dependability, and loyalty[1]) and faux-wood floors (to maintain your assumption that this is an eco-friendly store) guide you on this sensory-driven retail journey. You see, this is the grocery store of your future; the smells, colors, and layout have all been scientifically orchestrated to provide you with the most comfortable and profitable (for the grocery store at least) shopping experience beyond your wildest dreams. You control everything from the light bulb luminosity, and the mock-hardwood floors, to the shape of the displays, and what’s displayed in them. Yes each and every product (not just product category, but product) is placed in accordance with your preferences as determined from the market research, as well as the subconscious stimuli each product category hopes to achieve.

As neuroscience and scientific retail management each continue to progress, I can’t help but notice the potential partnership between the two. Take something like a CPG, combine it with an aroma therapist, and top it off with a neuroscientist and you can produce the truest form of customer oriented shopping. Having similar products placed within our 180x100 degree view span isn’t enough. “Your store” should be designed through a combination of researched sensory stimuli, as well as general buyer preferences. In my estimation, retailers should be worried about a 5^th ‘P’, Psychology.

The shopping experience is supposed to be just that – an experience. Nora Volkow, a prominent drug addiction researcher in the United States, claims that if you are hungry and you get a whiff of a delicious hamburger, your dopamine skyrockets[2]. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter which is involved in emotional arousal, motivation and experiencing pleasure.[3] Is it any surprise that the bakery is beside the front door? As psychologists learn more about the brain, and uncover the framework which stimulates many of our automatic functions, it’s a clear fit with what retailers claim to be trying to do: giving the customer what they want. If retailers are already trying to exploit natural human tendencies (i.e. the desire to turn right), what’s stopping them from going the next step and exploiting the neurotransmitters that determine those natural tendencies? It seems to make perfect sense. Certain colours, smells, sounds, and textures will all evoke different subconscious responses, and these can be targeted to achieve the retailers’ ultimate value proposition – your comfort, which equates to their profit.

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[1] Color, Psychology and Marketing. Precision Intermedia. 2001 – 2008. http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html

[2] McGowan, Kathleen. Addiction: Pay Attention. Psychology Today Magazine, Nov/Dec 2004. http://psychologytoday.com/articles/

[3] Passer, Smith, Atkinson, Mitchell, Muir. Psychology: Frontiers and Applications. Transcontinental Printing Group. 2003. Page 94.