Was this email forwarded to you? Get Behavior Analytics​

---

Seeing is not looking.

My cousin asked me to get smart earphones. The package arrived six months ago, and we both forgot about it. This weekend, I went looking and couldn’t find the earphones or a package.

I searched the whole house.

Long story short, I found it only after my cousin told me where to look.

I opened the guest bedroom cupboard at least ten times. The package was placed at eye level, and I still didn’t see it. When I knew where to look, I immediately noticed the package.

I was experiencing the Gorilla Test.

🤔What is the *Gorilla Test*?

The Gorilla Test, also known as the Invisible Gorilla Test, is a famous psychological experiment demonstrating inattentional blindness.

In this test, participants are asked to watch a video of people passing a basketball and to count the number of passes made by one of the teams. During the video, a person dressed in a gorilla costume walks through the scene, but surprisingly, many participants fail to notice the gorilla.

The Gorilla Test experiment reveals that when people are focused on a specific task, they can become blind to unexpected and conspicuous events.👀👀👀

In his popular podcast Nudge, Phill Agnew further explored the importance of the Gorilla Test with the researcher Dan Simmons.

Specifically,

Failure to notice unexpected events: About 50% of people fail to notice unexpected events. This phenomenon illustrates how attention can be selective and how easily people can miss out on noticeable events even when they occur right in front of them.

Recalling the experience: Further studies suggest that when participants are later asked about their experience, many who did not notice the gorilla initially are unable to recall it, underscoring the powerful impact of inattentional blindness.

If you know what to look for, you cannot avoid seeing it: Once people are aware of the unexpected event, they recognize it immediately

😃Behavior Analytics of “Inattentional Blindness”

Understanding attention is vital to marketing and retail performance because the human attention span is about 8 seconds.

In psychology, the “Attention Spectrum” refers to a range of cognitive states related to focus and receptivity. It includes Selective Attention, Sustained Attention, and Divided Attention. Inattention is the far side of the Attention Spectrum.

In Behavior Analytics, the Attention Spectrum describes the intensity of customer experience in physical environments.

Inattentional Blindness in Retail Stores

The principles of the Gorilla Test are often deployed in online marketing. They are also used to design store layouts, product planograms, and digital signage in physical stores.

For example,

• End-cap displays: If your supermarket displays are designed as long aisles, placing the end caps at the end of the aisle can draw shoppers' attention.
• Shelf Planogram: Product placement within the aisle, gondola, and shelf impacts the product's ability to attract shoppers.
• Digital Signage: The placement and content of digital monitors influence the visibility of the digital ads to passing shoppers.

Pattern Interrupts in Endcaps

Endcaps represent a good balance between Inattentional Blindness and Pattern Interrupts (using contrast to grab attention).

Endcaps aim to encourage impulse purchases. You expect to see featured products in the endcaps. How many people will “see” the products depends on capturing attention.

For example,

• Bright Signage to draw attention from people passing by.
• Eye-level shelves for easy browsing of high-margin products.
• Interactive elements such as QR codes or digital screens
• Cross-merchandising of complementary products.
• Seasonal themes enhance the relevance of the products.

For example,

Below is an image from the Stanford University Vision Project (2015) showing people passing by the Coffee Station but not seeing it.

In three weeks of baseline tracking, no one stopped by the kiosk—not a single person!

Effectively,

The Retail KPI that matters is the Conversion Rate.

😎Inattentional Blindness for Store Optimizers

Store Optimizers work on various projects. For example, they examine the impact of Open versus Closed displays, Tasting Demonstrations, and Customer Journey Mapping.

In this case, the challenge is to evaluate whether Pattern Interrupts created Inattentional Blindness or grabbed attention.

For example,

Here’s the process to evaluate “effective” endcaps with eye-tracking:

You start with the Win-Win-Win Alignment™:

The merchandising manager wants to attract people passing near the endcaps in a supermarket with “effective displays” evaluated with eye-tracking technology.

The relevant KPIs are:

Targeted Behavior: The Conversion Rate of people who engaged with products on the endcap out of the people who passed in the aisle and “saw” the endcap.

Influencing Behaviors: The Conversion Rate Attributed to Endcap Promotions

Success Target: Increasing the Effective Conversion Rate Attributed to Endcap Promotions by at least half a percent.

🤑Amplify Store Sales

Attention has economic value for retailers. As you probably already know, people don’t buy for logical reasons; they buy for emotions.

If you remember one thing from today’s newsletter...

Looking is not seeing.👀

So, you want to focus on designing habit-based behaviors and purchases to improve store performance.

Cheers,

P.S. Is there a specific topic you would like me to review? Hit reply.