In the Paradox of Choice Barry Schwartz recounts a marketing experiment about jam –- in a series of experiments employing a table laden with jam samples and discount coupons for said jam, the table with many, many samples (upwards of 20) led to many, many people stopping by to sample many, many jams.
But when it came time to buy? (That holy act known to some retailers as "conversion" and to others as the carnal "consummation".) The jam sample table spread with only three jams actually “motivated people to buy.” That is: more folks picked up a coupon and actually bought a damn jar of jam when there were fewer to choose from.
To the retailer, the storefront window is sacred space; the visual merchant’s only responsibility is to create a scene that evokes love at first sight. Anything else is failure.
Passing by this window in North Hollywood, crammed high with the back ends of shoes (only one third of the window is shown here – it extended in either direction with more of the same) two thoughts came to mind. The first was: Cool shot.
The second: A sad, unsettling feeling that, if the shop were open, I would walk inside and find a merchant barricaded behind his wares, breathing the quiet dust of desperation and pleading “Please. Buy something. Anything. I have it all.”
Like the woman wanting to be loved by anyone, for any reason, and in the noise of being everything, becomes no one.
4 comments:
The sad truth about store windows...
In the little shop I co-own nothing keeps me awake at night like trying to come up with the perfect display. Too much you look cheap, too little no one notices.
My greatest fear is that somewhere on some blog someone has posted a camera phone shot of my window with the caption “now isn’t this sad… “
girlfriend -- I've *seen* your shop window and they are *not* saying that. ;)
Scientific American had an interesting piece on a related phenomenon. A significant percentage of buyers experience LESS satisfaction when faced with a very large selection. They fear that they are not buying the best item possible. As opposed to when they have two or three items to choose from, and KNOW they have their favorite
good stuff. thanks, b1-67er.
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