Fundamental Psychological Guides to Retail and Spatial Design

By: Yuna

• Maslow's Hierarchy x2
  • Based on the “Maslow’s Hierarchy”, when we want to let people do something, we should let people feel it is safe.
    • big open spaces.
  • Based on the “Maslow’s Hierarchy”, people need “Self-actualization”. When we want people to do something, we need to let people think that what they have done is important and proud of themself.
• Sensory input learning
  • Based on what we know about contrast and sensory perception, people will be sensitive to the things that have high contrast. Every section can have different color. (Maybe every section in the supermarket can have a different color to let it have a high contrast with different sections. The reason that I think that way is because I want people to pay attention to every single section, and having high contrast can get people’s attention.)
    • Every section has a different color and different topic, hanging from cycling.
• Perception process learning
  • Based on the “Process of Perception”, when we want to let people pay attention to something, we need to let them think that the things that we want them to pay attention to are important to them.
• Influence perception experiment
  • Based on the research that I did before, if we want to influence people’s perception, the darkness should be really dark, and the brightness should be really bright. If the color is too similar, or the color is not enough, then it can’t influence people’s perception so much.
    • Any kind of darkness and brightness of color doesn't really affect people’s perception about the quality.
• Behavior research (classmates too)
  • Based on Zoey’s experiment, the music that is high pitch(高音) and scary will get people’s attention. Maybe the music that I play in the retail space should be soft, so let people focus on the products in the retail space.
    • smooth and slow music that can let people feel comfortable.
      • Zoey Lin - https://renickbell.net/middleschool/doku.php?id=students:zeoy-experiment-to-influence-behavior
• Linguistic techniques
  • Based on the “Organization and Interpretation in Perception”, people will organize things that they smell and see and feel before in their mind.
• Useful idea from Costco, Ikea
  • Based on the observation in Costco, putting the high price first like electricity products first can let people think the other thing like bread is very cheap.This can make people want to buy more things, because have it compared the product with high price with another product that looks cheaper than the high price.
    • One of the products has a free gift, but is expensive. One of the products doesn't have a free gift, but is cheap.
  • Based on the observation in Ikea, if we want to let people go over every section, we need to design our space to let them only have one way to go out, but not really like maze(迷宮). This can make people go to each section, in order to buy more things.
    • Every 3 or 5 sections it will have a place that has a doll that people can go to take pictures of, and it will have an arrow that tells them there is a doll that they can take pictures of.
• Traffic observations
  • Based on the traffic observation, we shouldn’t let people who need to do different things meet to use the same space, we should separate it. If people that need to do different things meet to use the same space, then it might get people stepping on other people, which is very dangerous.
• Needs and wants research
  • Based on the “Needs and Wants” research, people pay more attention to the things that they think are needed. We can let people organize the product that they bought with the idea of necessity and need, so then they will find the products when they come next time, and they will buy the products more often.
    • Use audio, ex: Girls need things like this……

*The Goal for my supermarket: let people stay longer as they can, to let them see more sections.