Justification and Reasoning for Supermarket Design Choices

By Yiler Huang

The main goal of my supermarket is to make people walk through the whole store and visit each section. It is reasonable to believe that customers will buy more things if they visited all the sections, because they are exposed to different products more and will likely be staying in the store longer.

In the attention step of the perception process, we learned that people tend to focus on things they think they need the most. Because electronics, pets, and health sections are the sections a majority of people don't need to visit in a supermarket, I put them right after the entrance so customers are more likely to visit them. The positioning of the household sections is also decided according to the same piece of information. Because household section might not be customers' main destination when they are shopping in a supermarket, I put it beside the vegetable section, a section with the most “needed” product, so customers will have to pass by household section before they go to the vegetable section.

Another design element that is used to achieve the goal is the arrows on the floor. Arrows are very recognizable shapes and are often organized with a guide for directions. People often organize a direction an arrow is pointing at as the “right direction” or “where to go”. If they are placed well, customers may follow them through the whole store. The promotions and announcements are also positioned near the arrows. This is also a reference to the check point system in traditional Japanese role playing video games such as Resident and Evil or Final Fantasy, which is corresponding to the video game style aesthetic of the store. Check points in video games are are spots where players can save the game and move on to the next scene, which is similar to the purpose of the arrows. The layout and spacing of the store is inspired by Ikea and the map in the Legend of Zelda, which only allows customers to see the store partially. This could help with making customers walk through the whole store because they will need to move to different sections in order to see the products they are looking for, this serves the purpose of the supermarket because they might also pass by other sections when they are looking for the product they want.

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The visuals in the supermarket are also designed accordingly to the video game aesthetic and references to many other art works from the entertainment industry. The logo is showing a shopping cart chasing products, which represents the main goal of the supermarket. The background is inspired by the classic scene sci-fi movie E.T. where the main character is riding his bike with the moon in the background. The cart chasing the products is inspired by video games such as Pac Man and Takahashi Meijin No Bouken Jima, which are games associating with collecting items from different places.

The “visit more save more” poster helps making customers visit all the sections, and is a reference to RPG games where the character gets stronger abilities or skills along with the exploration of the player. This encourages people to visit different sections directly because they can get 3% off on the purchase for each sections they visited, customers could get up to 39% off if they visited all the sections.

The “free ice cream” poster also makes customers visit all the sections more effectively, and it acts as an “end game reward” for celebrating customers visiting the whole store. This also encourages people to walk through the whole store and works with the “visit more save more”. Customers would realize that they can get a significant discount and a free ice cream if they walk through the whole store, and might be more willing to visit more sections. The line on the bottom right of the “ice cream machine” poster “welcome to the machine” is from a song from the album Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd in 1975, which associates with the retro video game theme in the store.

The two “robotic announcements” in the store are reminders of the information on the two posters in case customers didn't look at the poster clearly. According to the linguistic techniques, repeating a message could make people focus on it more and grab their attentions more easily. Therefore, the announcement are played right after the posters. The robotic sound is inspired by the band Daft Punk that is popular during the 90s, which also fits the retro aesthetic of the store.

The reason why the store has a retro theme is because it is a shared experience of many people, and is acts as a significant role in the entertainment industry. People can connect the idea of these games with traditional linear game plays with the goal of walking through the whole supermarket. In the article Shopper Demographics and Statistics in the U.S.(Zippa, 2021), we can see that the average age of supermarket shoppers is 40 years old. Which means that the retro theme might be more relatable to the majority of clients of the supermarket.

Overall, it is reasonable to believe that these designs can help with achieving the goal of making customers visit every sections.

Shopper Demographics and Statistics [2023]: Number Of Shoppers In The US. (2021, January 29). https://www.zippia.com/shopper-jobs/demographics/