Sunday, June 22, 1997

Stores scout for profit-making magic in the mundane

By CALVIN WOODWARD / Associated Press

NEW YORK - Shopping sleuth Paco Underhill snoops till he droops in search of that special gleam in the consumer's eye.

Shoppers around the country are tailed, their in-store routes mapped, their behavior filmed to the tune of 15,000 numbing hours of videotape a year, by Underhill and his teams of traveling gumshoes.

Underhill is a silent witness to the changing American marketplace. From the positioning of tie racks so people will not get their buttocks brushed to the "impulse tickle" that perks up shoppers before they reach the store, he sees marketplace magic in the mundane.

Take lollipops. Banks know parents are suckers for a sales pitch if their kids are kept happy with candy. Or towels. Underhill knows a towel is handled by 6.6 people on average before it is bought.

"The traditional marketing engine still works but it doesn't work as well as it used to," the dapper scout says from the Manhattan offices of Envirosell, his consumer research company. "You're madly scrambling to keep up with the 200-pound gorilla the American consumer has become."

Hear them roar. Vance Packard's 1950s expose, "The Hidden Persuaders," showed how consumers are manipulated by image and ads. Now a growing school of research believes the consumer is in control.

"Years ago, everyone was focusing on building brand loyalty and building name recognition," says Mark Kolligian, director of marketing research and consumer relations at CVS/pharmacy.

"All that stuff is important but it kind of overshadowed all all those dynamics that happen as the customer is standing there right at the shelf. The business sciences are getting more sophisticated. They're starting to really drill down into the very little things that make a difference."

Merchants glean information from product bar codes, focus groups, demographers who build precise profiles of neighborhoods and behavioral science spies like Underhill who simply watch.

And watch. He is like the husband who gets dragged along on a shopping trip that never ends. "Most of it," he says, "is profoundly boring."

He has found:

-- People walk like they drive, to the right. Stores can slant window displays or entire storefronts toward approaching pedestrians to "tickle" them sooner. In airports, impulse shops should be to the right of the main flow. Fast food can be on the left because people will cross to reach it.

-- Shoppers can take a long time to slow down after entering a store, so special product displays or promotions should be placed farther back. "There's almost a defined line where you can say ... this is where their peripheral vision engages."

-- Shoppers are averse to getting their buttocks brushed by others and will avoid ties, belts and other displays in aisles where they might get rear-ended.

-- Older people are repelled by bank automation, bewildered in toy superstores because they get little help choosing gifts for grandchildren, and struggle to read labels and signs. Sellers will benefit by planning for the ailing eyesight of aging and wealthy baby boomers.

Wal-Mart, for one, has installed magnifying lenses on some pharmaceutical shelves.

All this is meant to keep up with new shopping patterns.

Before, fancy ladies shopped in fine stores. Now they think nothing of running from Neiman Marcus to the warehouse chain. A lot is decided inside the mall, the shop, a particular aisle.

That is why sellers need to divine the telling nuances of design, display and crowd dynamics.

For CVS, Underhill's taping made clear the need to have shopping baskets at various points in the stores and to create more space even if it meant thinning out merchandise, Kolligian said.

"It's a really simple, kind of stupid thing that you should have thought of, but becomes clear when you see it on the videotape," he said.

Starbucks, Anheuser-Busch, McDonald's and Proctor & Gamble are among the product manufacturers, retail chains, banks and restaurants in America and Europe that have hired Envirosell to tell them, in effect, what is going on under their noses.

Underhill counts cashier knee-bends and calculates the toll that takes on checkout efficiency. The remedy: vertical shelves and color coding to help the cashier find the right shopping bag fast.

He also advocates more seats but says they should only be as comfortable as the situation warrants - fast food seating is designed to roust rumps in about 10 minutes.

"Don't install easy chairs," he warns, "unless that's what you're selling."