The Secret Psychology of Shopping

4-Tune Zone

Retail anthropologists divide a shop into 4 zones. The 4th zone is usually where essential, popular goods are located. In a supermarket this would be produce like milk and eggs, while in a men's clothes shop it might be where the suits are. This zone is placed so that the shopper would have to go through the other zones to get there – hopefully buying other goods along the way.

Advertising campaigns are designed to appeal to the right hand side of your brain. It's this part of you that processes art, music and other abstract stimuli. Advertising – with its pictures, music and recurring themes – seeks to steer your unconscious desires through the gateway of your right brain.

Higher priced products are usually placed at eye-level, where people are most likely to reach. Such is the retail power of this shelf-level that manufacturers will often pay shops to secure it for their products.

Plenty of chairs throughout a shop will maximise sales. It has been shown that children and partners are less impatient when seated. Less moaning means more shopping!

Crowded displays, which cause unwanted physical contact, have been shown to hamper sales. Known as the ‘butt brush factor’ in the US , this is the reason why shops tend to be open plan with wide aisles and plenty of room to manoeuvre.

Retailers draw on all our senses to sell. Research has shown, for example, that the smell of fresh bread wafting through a shop encourages people to spend more money.

Supermarkets will generally place their most profitable sections – the meat and seafood counters – along the entire back wall, so that they are visible as you emerge from every aisle.

The business of targeting consumers goes well beyond advertising campaigns. The placing of products in the shop itself is often subtly tailored to the intended buyers. Pet treats, for example, are placed at an accessible level for children and the elderly, since it is known that they are the ones most likely to buy them.