Your In-Store Customers Want More Privacy
Maybe you’re eyeing a department store display when you begin to realize a sales associate is, in turn, eyeing you. Or perhaps you’re the sales associate yourself, trying to decide whether intervening will help make a sale.
Regardless of which position you’re in, the relationship between shoppers and retail employees can have a direct impact on a customer’s decision to make a purchase. Store managers might assume that more interaction is better, and encourage their sales associates to make eye contact, cheerfully greet shoppers, and offer prompt help. But several studies my colleagues and I have conducted over the past six years have found that when clerks interact with customers at the wrong time, sales can drop. Our preliminary findings suggest it may all come down to respecting privacy.
Shoppers want a certain level of privacy in a store — and they want to have control over that privacy. In other words, people generally prefer being left alone, but also want to be able to get help if and when they need it. So when a shopper perceives that an employee is watching them when they don’t require assistance, they’re more inclined to flee the aisle in order to regain control – and is thus less likely to make a purchase. According to one field experiment with shoppers of a mass-merchandise store, if eye contact is made, the shopper is 37% less likely to purchase their intended product during that trip. Similarly, in line with a second field experiment where shoppers’ personal space was invaded, shoppers are 25% less likely to purchase the item in question if they feel another person is too close to them.
Control over privacy becomes even more important when the product expresses a great deal about a person. Items such as nail polish or hair dye are more expressive in comparison to non-expressive products like face wash or cotton balls. Not only do expressive items usually require more focused browsing time, they reveal more information about a shopper. We conducted a field experiment with shoppers at a mass-merchandise store and found that people were much more likely to abandon the purchase of nail polish (expressive) when their personal-space was invaded versus when they were shopping for makeup remover (non-expressive). Additional survey research of 221 shoppers helps to explain the phenomenon. Getting close to shoppers when they are eyeing less expressive products can actually increase sales because the product isn’t as telling of their personality. However, if the product says a lot about the shopper, they prefer some distance while they browse. Overall, when you invade someone’s privacy, the abandonment of a purchase is much more likely to occur when the product is expressive.
There’s also the embarrassment factor. Items that fall into this category are family planning products, feminine hygiene products, and sexual health items, to name a few. According to working papers that include panel surveys of 150 consumers listing 450 products, several products are embarrassing only to a particular gender: for women it’s facial hair removal products and for men it’s (somewhat surprisingly) toilet paper. Seven separate experiments involving a total of 425 shoppers show that this embarrassment is made more pronounced when these products are differentiated through loud and distinct packaging. And an observational study showed that embarrassing products that were packaged less-conspicuously were purchased double that of the highly conspicuously packaged items. So it’s with these embarrassing products that it becomes most necessary for a shopper to feel in control of their privacy.
So how do you create an environment that facilitates this type of control? It’s difficult and impractical for a store to ask employees to stay away from shoppers altogether. For one, it’s difficult for anyone to discern how much social interaction a customer might need at any given time. Leaving shoppers in complete isolation is impossible to achieve and isn’t necessarily the shopper’s desired experience, either. Plus, privacy while shopping isn’t about creating an environment where employees and shoppers don’t interact at all — it’s about giving shoppers control.
Luckily, there are some fairly simple solutions, and most have been tested and found to be successful through multiple laboratory experiments and surveys of numerous shoppers. Stores can increase privacy control by making shopping baskets available in various places throughout the store (so shoppers can “hide” their products), placing a “push for help” button in every aisle, or putting high-theft items in a vending machine rather than keeping them locked up (so shoppers don’t have to ask for the item). Highly embarrassing items should go in an aisle rather than on an endcap as this increases anonymity and privacy. Self-checkouts are another way to increase control over privacy to shoppers. Retailers that use such self-service technology should ensure those lanes are open, operating correctly, and perhaps turn down the volume of the announcement of the item that was scanned.
Customizing shopping trips to meet the privacy needs of customers can result in higher purchase intentions and more satisfied customers. This is all the more important today, when online purchases for the first time outnumbered purchases made in store (excluding groceries), according to a yearly UPS survey of 5,000 online shoppers. One reason shoppers may prefer shopping online is due to it being an environment where purchases can be made with higher levels of control over privacy. As retailers struggle with how to get shoppers in their doors — and coming back — they should focus on creating a more satisfying in-store experience with this point in mind.
Carol Esmark, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Mississippi State University. Her primary areas of research include in-store privacy, loyalty programs, and retailing. She has been studying in-store privacy for six years. Her work has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, and the Journal of Operations Management.
Stephanie M. Noble is a Professor in the Marketing & Supply Chain Management Department at the University of Tennessee.
Your In-Store Customers Want More Privacy
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