Excerpt from Customers' Shopping Patterns in Retail Food Stores: An Exploratory Study

Customer traffic flow was concentrated along the perimeter of the stores, including grocery gondola ends, and in the cross aisles of grocery gondolas. Both areas were well above the store's average of 6h percent.

Sample stores with continuous grocery gondolas generally experienced greater coverage and a more evenly distributed customer traffic flow in the grocery area than those which had the gondolas divided into unequal lengths forming a cross aisle in the grocery department. Twenty-five percent of the customers observed in stores with continuous grocery gondolas shopped the entire selling area of the store, while only 5 percent completely shopped the stores with a cross aisle in the grocery department.

The customer flow data indicate that the strategic placement of power or demand items such as bread, beef, or paper products, which customers regular ly buy, can be used to advantage to distribute customer traffic throughout the store's selling area. As a result, customers would be exposed to more products and might add to their purchases.

In a test store, where bread was displayed first in the bakery department with respect to traffic flow, concentration of shoppers was 80 percent at this point; only about to percent of the shoppers continued through the bakery department. After the white bread display was relocated and was placed last in the line of the customers approach in the bakery department and the other breads were placed on the top shelf of the bakery rack in a ribbon display, cake sales increased noticeably, while bread sales remained unchanged. Otherfood commodities which showed considerable drawing power were cookies and crackers, which were purchased by nearly 30 percent of the approximately customers observed; coffee, 25 percent; canned vegetables, 2h percent; and cereals, 23 percent. Among nonfoods, the most frequently purchased commodities were paper products, nearly 35 percent; soaps, 27 percent; and health and beauty aids, 18 percent.

Special displays at the ends of gondolas accounted for less than 3 percent of store purchases, although they occupied the equivalent of 50 linear feet of shelf space. This much space on the regular shelves accounted for about 6 percent of purchases in the test stores. Also, when end-of-gondola displays contained sale-priced items, promoted intensively, traffic around these dis plays increased, but an equal and Opposite change in traffic flow was observed in the aisles of the grocery department. This indicated that locating displays of sale-priced and promoted grocery items within the gondolas rather than placing them at the ends may result in a more desirable distribution of cus tomer traffic flow in the grocery department. Sale-priced items which are generally traffic builders themselves can be used to draw a larger proportion of shoppers into the grocery aisles, increasing product exposure of items on regular shelves and possibly improving total sales. Also, such change would free those naturally high traffic areas around ends of gondolas and make them available for displaying specialty foods, new or discontinued foods, or high markup impulse food or nonfood commodities, and thereby benefit overall store sales.

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